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Sylmar - Elves vs Orcs Battlefield


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#1 Zyraen

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Posted 04 January 2008 - 02:54 AM

Since this is probably going to be a separate mod all by itself, I decided to split a topic off for it :)

Sylmar - Elves vs Orcs Battlefield

This scenario is meant to be a precursor of what is to come in Silmarillion.

Background
The background is simple - you agree to help an elf with an invasion to their holy burial grounds, and are summoned to the place.
There you will help the general of the elves, called the Warden, remain alive and hold off waves of Orcs. On your side there will also be Elven squads spawning, but at a slower rate.

Squad Mechanics
There is a fixed number of squads that will "reinforce" the map, for each side ; after that, the spawn rate is halved, ie reinforcements take a long time to arrive. So knowing how to take out enemy squads becomes important, while conserving your own sides squad numbers. Amidst this you will also have to keep the Warden alive at all costs. Squads revolve around Commanders, like Elven Sergeants Lieutenants etc, and Orcish Chieftains, Champions, Warlords.

Objectives
If you fail to conserve the Elven squads properly, with 25% of the Elven squads left in reserve, the Elven King Shade will spawn at the Graveyard. He has considerable battle ability and will greatly help against the orcs ; however he is also your countdown to defeat, as he cannot be healed and though he has a tonne of Life, they will gradually be whittled away as the Orcs arrive. Once the Elven King Shade arrives, he also becomes a critical objective - you have to guard him to the best of your ability while keeping the Warden alive as well. If the Elven King Shade dies you also lose the Scenario.

To win the scenario, you have to defeat the enemy commanders - turns out to be 3 Balrogs leading the Orcish army, and they arrive on the field when 75% of the Orcish squads have already been fielded, and only 25% are left in reserve. The Balrogs will attack one at a time, and the next will attack about 100 game-seconds after the previous one is defeated. Each Balrog can be likened to a building with a strong attacking capacity, and it will be fairly impossible to take them down alone ; you will have to rely on Elven Squad support to defeat each and every one of them, one at a time.

All enemies spawn with hitpoints stats etc, based on your Level. Both Balrogs and Elven King Shade engage in melee combat at a distance (ie they have a melee weapon with considerable Range)

Rewards
If you win the map, every party member gets 150K XP and the party gains 2 Reputation.
If you lose the map, the Warden's death results in -60K XP and -1 Rep ; the death of the Elven King Shade results in -90K XP and -1 Rep.

There is also bonus 30K XP, for killing a Balrog before it starts to move on its own to attack the centre. This bonus would apply to killing the 2 Balrogs that do not attack initially, before they actually attack. Its quite a challenge but players are welcome to try it :) I know I had hell a lot of fun playtesting this.

Other Features
- Warden uses, among other standard abilities like Prayer, Holy Smite, Chain Lightning, Stoneskin, he also uses something called Mass Regeneration that grants himself and all nearby friendly units +5 Life / Sec for 10 seconds. Note that the Warden's Holy Smite *does* hurt party members who are Evil, so Evil PCs cannot join the battle and watch out for Korgan / Viconia if you're using them
- Elven King Shade summons his Dancing Sword Anguirel, that has fast movement fast attack speed, and does ice damage on top of normal damage. It lasts only for 5 rounds, but is resummonable, and also has a tendency to "flit" around from enemy to enemy during battle, even though its original target is still alive. Hence its name the Dancing Sword.
- Balrogs use, apart from standard Fire Shield, Fear, Paralyzing Gaze, Sunfire, Fireball, they also use Flaming Whip, that does considerable fire damage and slows the target down to a crawl

The mod should be released within the next 2 days. (I promised K'ae it'd be done within 12 days of Christmas)

Feel free to post questions here :)

Edited by Zyraen, 04 January 2008 - 02:59 AM.

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#2 Tassadar88

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Posted 04 January 2008 - 03:29 AM

How have you handled the animations, if I may? Are you using some that are not present in a standard ToB installation/ if so, is it compatible with Cuvīs work?

Looking forward to trying that one out :)
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#3 Zyraen

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Posted 04 January 2008 - 07:55 AM

No special animations in this one. Just the standard BG2 ones, sorry to disappoint ^^;

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#4 Tassadar88

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Posted 04 January 2008 - 11:40 AM

Makes me wonder... would you WANT some new animations? For the balrogs for example? To give them the extra touch of uniqueness? Cuv had quite a few plans to add more demonish animations, and would probably be able to provide them. Not sure whether within the frame of two days, but you never know ;)
The Mind is its own place and in itself - can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven. -John Milton, Paradise lost

#5 Miloch

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Posted 04 January 2008 - 04:36 PM

Makes me wonder... would you WANT some new animations?

Heh.

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#6 Zyraen

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Posted 04 January 2008 - 05:25 PM

Since the Balor are actually based off Balrogs, I don't think there's an immediate need for them. Maybe for the Silmarillion itself, but I question when it would actually be useful - after all Balrogs are but one race, and will not show up often. It hardly justifies the trouble of using a special BAM for them. Even using a special BAM for Gothmog, that might be justifiable, but definitely not for the Sample Battlefield.

The ones i do really need is for Huan the Hound of the Valar and a special one for Morgoth himself.

Edited by Zyraen, 04 January 2008 - 05:26 PM.

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#7 Zyraen

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Posted 06 January 2008 - 05:57 AM

Pasting the Release Announcement here from K'aeloree -

Aid a nation of elves with an invasion into their holy burial grounds. Fight in a war alongside the elven army, and test your battlefield acumen by combating against continually attacking hosts of orcs and even against deadly, nightmarish demons, while keeping the elven commander alive and their holy grounds sacred.

This mod is meant to be a small sample battlefield, as a precursor of what is to come in Silmarillion. It is NOT a Total Conversion and is totally compatible with all other WeiDU mods.

You can download the mod here and read more about it here!



PS : Please do comment about balance ^^;; and no its not as tactical as I would like it to be.

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#8 Zyraen

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Posted 08 January 2008 - 02:03 AM

My goodness, I just checked the date I posted my original topic on Medieval Battlefields, and I thought it was posted on early November, meaning I had over 2 months to develop this mod, but turns out it was done on 30th November o.O just slightly over 1 month to come up with the scripted engine for Sylm and release a scenario o.O

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#9 Eric P.

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Posted 09 January 2008 - 09:48 AM

I tried this mod on my Mac (OS X) for the first time. When the person in the Council of Six building tries to transport the party to the burial ground, I get a CTD with the following error message:

An Assertion failed in ChDimm.cpp at line number 7997
Programmer says: Silverbird:BGII - SoA:cd4:data:AREA1800.bif: attempted to use compressed BIF from CD, check free hard drive space.

I find this odd, as my HD has over 83GB of free space on it. I do have Area1800.BIF in the cd4 folder inside my main BGII - SoA folder. If anyone knows how to solve this, please let me know!

Thanks,
Eric

Working and playing on a Mac Pro 6,1 running Mac OS X 10.13.6 High Sierra, and a Mac Pro 3,1 running Mac OS X 10.11.6 El Capitan.

~Buion na 'ell! I serve with joy! Your eyes and ears I shall be. Let us hunt together!~
- Erysseril Gwaethorien: a joinable, romanceable NPC mod for BGII - SoA/ToB, in sporadic development.

A female elf warrior of nature and a Bhaalspawn cross paths during their quests, joining forces to share adventure and companionship. Will they find more?


#10 Zyraen

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Posted 09 January 2008 - 11:58 PM

Try using CLUAConsole:MoveToArea("AR1800") then after that talk to the NPC.

Let me know if it works ^^;

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#11 Jarno Mikkola

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Posted 10 January 2008 - 01:13 AM

And if those don't work try:

...check free hard drive space.
I find this odd, as my HD has over 83GB of free space on it. I do have Area1800.BIF in the cd4 folder inside my main BGII - SoA folder. If anyone knows how to solve this, please let me know!

Well as I see it there might be two problems, but they have the same solution! The problems, the first is that the cache size might be too low, and the 2nd is that the game doesn't know that the hard drive is so large and get's an error because of this, and this is caused by the fact that at the time, we didn't have a computers that had 83GB of space in it.

And this solution is busting up the game cache size. Thy putting a 1000MB's in the baldur.ini or via the bgconfig(.exe in PCs, as I don't know it in Mac)

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#12 Eric P.

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Posted 10 January 2008 - 01:09 PM

OK, I'll adjust the cache size and see what happens.

What I did to try to solve this was to copy the AR1800 file from CD4 to the cd4 folder inside my BGII folder. Today I tested by talking to the guy in Council of Six to kick off the mod. He transported the party, and the Loading Area screen appeared three times! The party arrived, and talked with the Warden, and then the Orc attack commenced. All worked well enough, and then I quit the game to try it again and check consistency.

The second time through, there were problems. Now, the party arrives at the area where the allies are waiting, but my protagonist transports to a duplicate AR1800, and encounters vampires instead of the allies and Orcs. I have no way to get him back to the party when this happens. So, I quit the game again.

The third time through, when the guy transported the party, I again got the CTD with the same error message as before. Something might be messing with AR1800 in an unwanted way, but I don't know for sure.

Back to testing...
- E

Working and playing on a Mac Pro 6,1 running Mac OS X 10.13.6 High Sierra, and a Mac Pro 3,1 running Mac OS X 10.11.6 El Capitan.

~Buion na 'ell! I serve with joy! Your eyes and ears I shall be. Let us hunt together!~
- Erysseril Gwaethorien: a joinable, romanceable NPC mod for BGII - SoA/ToB, in sporadic development.

A female elf warrior of nature and a Bhaalspawn cross paths during their quests, joining forces to share adventure and companionship. Will they find more?


#13 Eric P.

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Posted 10 January 2008 - 01:57 PM

Just to clarify, it's AREA1800.BIF that applies to my earlier statements. I still see Loading Area twice in a row, which makes me suspect that, for some reason, the game is loading the normal Area 1800 and the modded Area 1800.

Added detail: When my protagonist is transported to the second 1800 area, party reputation drops by one, and a message appears, saying that I've left the area despite my agreement :( Oddly, I can still move the rest of the party around on the mod version of Area 1800, and the squad & Warden are still there, but I constantly get the Warden thanking me for my assistance, which pauses the game. This happens every couple seconds.

Increasing cache size to 1024MB in BGConfig has no effect.

Always, if I try loading the saved game a second time (saved just before talking to the Council of Six guy to start the mod), I get the CTD with Assertion Failed message when he transports the party, BEFORE the "Loading Area" screen would normally appear.

The mod is unplayable in this state, so I'm hoping there's a solution. Please help!

Thanks,
Eric

Working and playing on a Mac Pro 6,1 running Mac OS X 10.13.6 High Sierra, and a Mac Pro 3,1 running Mac OS X 10.11.6 El Capitan.

~Buion na 'ell! I serve with joy! Your eyes and ears I shall be. Let us hunt together!~
- Erysseril Gwaethorien: a joinable, romanceable NPC mod for BGII - SoA/ToB, in sporadic development.

A female elf warrior of nature and a Bhaalspawn cross paths during their quests, joining forces to share adventure and companionship. Will they find more?


#14 Eric P.

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Posted 10 January 2008 - 02:32 PM

Just to clarify, it's AREA1800.BIF that applies to my earlier statements. I still see Loading Area twice in a row, which makes me suspect that, for some reason, the game is loading the normal Area 1800 and the modded Area 1800.

Added detail: When my protagonist is transported to the second 1800 area, party reputation drops by one, and a message appears, saying that I've left the area despite my agreement :( Oddly, I can still move the rest of the party around on the mod version of Area 1800, and the squad & Warden are still there, but I constantly get the Warden thanking me for my assistance, which pauses the game. This happens every couple seconds.

Increasing cache size to 1024MB in BGConfig has no effect.

Always, if I try loading the saved game a second time (saved just before talking to the Council of Six guy to start the mod), I get the CTD with Assertion Failed message when he transports the party, BEFORE the "Loading Area" screen would normally appear.

The mod is unplayable in this state, so I'm hoping there's a solution. Please help!

Thanks,
Eric

Working and playing on a Mac Pro 6,1 running Mac OS X 10.13.6 High Sierra, and a Mac Pro 3,1 running Mac OS X 10.11.6 El Capitan.

~Buion na 'ell! I serve with joy! Your eyes and ears I shall be. Let us hunt together!~
- Erysseril Gwaethorien: a joinable, romanceable NPC mod for BGII - SoA/ToB, in sporadic development.

A female elf warrior of nature and a Bhaalspawn cross paths during their quests, joining forces to share adventure and companionship. Will they find more?


#15 Zyraen

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Posted 10 January 2008 - 11:05 PM

Just CLUAConsole:MoveToArea("Zy1800") :) ignore the govt guy, don't need him.

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Love between a Law Enforcer and a Fugitive - can such a thing even happen?
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#16 Zyraen

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Posted 10 January 2008 - 11:07 PM

The area loading bug aside, there's some serious gameplay balance issues on this map (namely too easy and too much waiting time), so I would suggest no one download this till the next release takes effect.

Thanks :) especially to Eric.P for playtesting!

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Love between a Law Enforcer and a Fugitive - can such a thing even happen?
SoA Release - Overview / Download Links

Zyraen's Miscellaneous Mods - Ust Natha Accelerator, item tweaks, XP caps, The Ub3r Reaver Kit, and much more...
Spellhold Gauntlet - more than just a Spellhold-Be-Gone
Hidden Kits - hidden dual-classed kits with a twist for progression


#17 Eric P.

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Posted 11 January 2008 - 11:18 AM

I'm very happy to help, especially since I'm on a Mac (and with a pretty convoluted game configuration, what with all the mods I've been installing and testing). This battlefield mod works well, and the opponents take a LOT of punishment, but yes, too much time passes between appearances of Orc squads. In my most recent test game, where I loaded up my party with my highest-level characters and had them fight the Orcs, I saw things I haven't seen before (most notably the appearance of the Elven King Shade, King Arveinas), but not a single Balrog spawned. I used ctrl-T several times, but to no avail. We fought a few Orc squads, and a few "commanders" that don't move about the field, but that also don't take damage, were left, at the Balrog spawning points, and no new Orc squads spawned. It appeared that all the Elves had arrived by that time as well, because I saw a large group of reinforcements in the northern part of the map, and another group somewhere in the eastern portion.

Looking forward to the revision!

- E

Working and playing on a Mac Pro 6,1 running Mac OS X 10.13.6 High Sierra, and a Mac Pro 3,1 running Mac OS X 10.11.6 El Capitan.

~Buion na 'ell! I serve with joy! Your eyes and ears I shall be. Let us hunt together!~
- Erysseril Gwaethorien: a joinable, romanceable NPC mod for BGII - SoA/ToB, in sporadic development.

A female elf warrior of nature and a Bhaalspawn cross paths during their quests, joining forces to share adventure and companionship. Will they find more?


#18 Zyraen

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Posted 11 January 2008 - 06:45 PM

The download has been updated :) to Sylmar v1.01

==========

UPDATES / BUG FIXES from v 1.00

- Teleported directly to Zy1800, this should not cause the game to hang (tested by clearing the BG2/cache of AR1800.BIF)
- Balrogs are now immune to Harm, Stun and Slow
- Orcs will now spawn almost immediately if there are no orcs on the map
- Timers have been adjusted to increase Orc Squad Spawn Rate
- Orcs are slightly less prone to overcrowding
- The Warden now counts towards the 3 Elven Commander limit on the map
- The Warden's Squad no longer "separates" on spawning
- Respawning Squad members are now very unlikely to be assigned to the wrong Squad, an effect that caused Elf Squads to grow beyond their maximum size on Respawning

===========

Download can be had at - http://www.shsforums...mp;showfile=564

kiyos.jpg____btlbn2.gif____kovaS.jpg
Love between a Law Enforcer and a Fugitive - can such a thing even happen?
SoA Release - Overview / Download Links

Zyraen's Miscellaneous Mods - Ust Natha Accelerator, item tweaks, XP caps, The Ub3r Reaver Kit, and much more...
Spellhold Gauntlet - more than just a Spellhold-Be-Gone
Hidden Kits - hidden dual-classed kits with a twist for progression


#19 WizWom

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Posted 12 January 2008 - 04:26 PM

In a clean install, this latest hangs my game on trying a
MoveToArea("zy1800")

I'm running a 1.76 GHz Core 2 Duo, with 1 GB RAM.

#20 Eric P.

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Posted 12 January 2008 - 05:24 PM

WizWom, I don't know if it's case-sensitive or not, but I had no problem transporting a party to the area when using a capital Z (Zy1800). You might also want to try transporting first to AR1800, then to Zy1800.

Good luck!
Eric

Working and playing on a Mac Pro 6,1 running Mac OS X 10.13.6 High Sierra, and a Mac Pro 3,1 running Mac OS X 10.11.6 El Capitan.

~Buion na 'ell! I serve with joy! Your eyes and ears I shall be. Let us hunt together!~
- Erysseril Gwaethorien: a joinable, romanceable NPC mod for BGII - SoA/ToB, in sporadic development.

A female elf warrior of nature and a Bhaalspawn cross paths during their quests, joining forces to share adventure and companionship. Will they find more?