18 replies to this topic

[Cal Jones]

I finally finished Longer Road and want to say, great job, it's a really enjoyable mod with, obviously, a lot of work put into it.
My party include my PC (cleric), Edwin (Laufey romance version), Imoen, Valygar and Sarevok. The banters with those characters were well done. (Loved the mage duel!)
The deva quest was excellent - it worked fine for me, once I figured out what I had to do (eg actually telling the Beblith where he had to go, rather than expecting him to follow) and was slightly amused to see a bit of Icewind Dale pop up.
Liked the character portraits - some of them looked rather familiar (I know Nyalee is from Fallout but I'm sure I've seen some of the others as well).

I did have a couple of bits of weirdness.
Firstly, the Ellesime dream featured two Ellesimes and two Jons - I'm not sure if that was intentional but it didn't look like it.
Second, during the final redemption sequence, Jon becomes an elf, then says something about Balthazar (which is out of place in that context) and falls silent. I had to force talk him to trigger the actual soul-grafting sequence, so it looks like a mis-timed interject or something.
I also got the Improved Yaga-Shura fight even though I'd not installed that component of Ascension this time round - not sure if this is LR's fault as I don't generally run many mods together (in this case just the Edwin romance and a few UB components which shouldn't have had any bearing on the battles - in fact, Sarevok's remorse is about the only thing from UB that would have affected ToB at all).

There were also quite a lot of typos in the dialogues. If you ever need anyone to help proof or edit, I'm happy to help as I've done a lot of proofing and editing as part of my job. Just PM me if needs be.

Finally, I will say Jon is one tough fellow to redeem. On my first attempt I failed, without really knowing why - I had done all the quest the right way, so I can only assume it was one bit of botched dialogue which occurred early in Watcher's Keep. By the time I figured out how to use the JonRedemptionCounter variable I was at Abazigal's lair, and offered Jon the chance to decide for himself. Big mistake, as he took the soul, Imoen stormed off, Val attacked and killed Jon and I was left with only Sarevok and Eddie. Ouch! I reloaded but had to go back a loooong way, all the way to WK, and do everything over, to get the "good" ending. I dunno, it does seem a bit harsh to set the redemption counter back by 1000 points for a conversation slip up (I don't think I said anything really bad - just a bit snarky, perhaps) as you can't recover from that. I could understand getting hit like that for doing something like keeping the Deva Spark or Malla's Soul, or general acts of evil, but it seemed a bit harsh for choosing a wrong dialogue option. That's my personal opinion of course - I'm sure there are arguments to the contrary.

Anyway, just wanted to say I really enjoyed the mod and appreciate the work that must have gone into it. It kept me rooted to my PC all weekend.

[dorotea]

I finally finished Longer Road and want to say, great job, it's a really enjoyable mod with, obviously, a lot of work put into it.
My party include my PC (cleric), Edwin (Laufey romance version), Imoen, Valygar and Sarevok. The banters with those characters were well done. (Loved the mage duel!)
The deva quest was excellent - it worked fine for me, once I figured out what I had to do (eg actually telling the Beblith where he had to go, rather than expecting him to follow) and was slightly amused to see a bit of Icewind Dale pop up.
Liked the character portraits - some of them looked rather familiar (I know Nyalee is from Fallout but I'm sure I've seen some of the others as well).

I did have a couple of bits of weirdness.
Firstly, the Ellesime dream featured two Ellesimes and two Jons - I'm not sure if that was intentional but it didn't look like it.
Second, during the final redemption sequence, Jon becomes an elf, then says something about Balthazar (which is out of place in that context) and falls silent. I had to force talk him to trigger the actual soul-grafting sequence, so it looks like a mis-timed interject or something.
I also got the Improved Yaga-Shura fight even though I'd not installed that component of Ascension this time round - not sure if this is LR's fault as I don't generally run many mods together (in this case just the Edwin romance and a few UB components which shouldn't have had any bearing on the battles - in fact, Sarevok's remorse is about the only thing from UB that would have affected ToB at all).

There were also quite a lot of typos in the dialogues. If you ever need anyone to help proof or edit, I'm happy to help as I've done a lot of proofing and editing as part of my job. Just PM me if needs be.

Finally, I will say Jon is one tough fellow to redeem. On my first attempt I failed, without really knowing why - I had done all the quest the right way, so I can only assume it was one bit of botched dialogue which occurred early in Watcher's Keep. By the time I figured out how to use the JonRedemptionCounter variable I was at Abazigal's lair, and offered Jon the chance to decide for himself. Big mistake, as he took the soul, Imoen stormed off, Val attacked and killed Jon and I was left with only Sarevok and Eddie. Ouch! I reloaded but had to go back a loooong way, all the way to WK, and do everything over, to get the "good" ending. I dunno, it does seem a bit harsh to set the redemption counter back by 1000 points for a conversation slip up (I don't think I said anything really bad - just a bit snarky, perhaps) as you can't recover from that. I could understand getting hit like that for doing something like keeping the Deva Spark or Malla's Soul, or general acts of evil, but it seemed a bit harsh for choosing a wrong dialogue option. That's my personal opinion of course - I'm sure there are arguments to the contrary.

Anyway, just wanted to say I really enjoyed the mod and appreciate the work that must have gone into it. It kept me rooted to my PC all weekend.

Thank you for your honest and detailed opinion. The mod was proof-read by a number of different editors - but perhaps there were too many and I rushed the release. If you wish, I can dig out the original dialog files and mail them to you - but that will be after my intended long trip to Russia. I have a feeling I might want to do another LR release - there is a lot of sudden resurgent interest in BG and the mod - which is strange 5 years after release... and weidu have changed as well as many other things about modding the Infinity Engine. I lost much of my scripting skills - for lack of usage, but I suppose I can try to recover.

[Cal Jones]

Always happy to help out.
I am quite a late comer to mods - I played BG obsessively when it came out originally (just to try out all the strongholds, romances and party combinations) but then got sucked into Ultima Online for seven years. I quit last year after my RP guild fell apart (lots of people left UO for WoW and other games so the RP community on my server withered away), dusted off my IE games again and discovered mods. Now I'm hooked again!
Anyway, enjoy your trip to Russia!

[Sergei Lebedeff]

I finished ToB+ Longer Road.

Joneleth did not change. He took Abazigal`s soulstone and attempted his revenge once more, destroying the whole elven nation and himself. It is strange - I thought that saving both Deva and Bebilith would be enough.

I just decided to try once again. I took LG cleric this time and refused to give him a soul of Bhaalspawn. Moreover I intend to deal with Watcher Keep *before* rendez-vous with brother-dragon (Abazigal). Hope this would be enough.

[Aliya]

Yep, I've played Longer Road, a few times, and I must say, it is a good mod. Well, I didn't like Irenicus, very much in the beginning. For al those things he has done to Charname and etc. (Especially after Laufey's novel). But when I looked at the his mask (O_O +4 spells!), and casting rate, everything changed. I love the dialogue with squirrels (xD I fell from chair!), and music to these talks. Swan Lake? What's my comments!

[Cal Jones]

He is hard to redeem. First time I tried, I failed. I had done everything right except one slightly snippy comment during a dialogue with him, which set his redemption counter back by 1000 points. The mod punishes you hard for the smallest slip (as I've said in my initial post in this thread).
I did restore to an earlier save, after that, and had no further problems. You just have to be very, very careful about what you say to him.

[Sergei Lebedeff]

Swan Lake?

Definitly not


Where I can look for a redemption counter? o_O
I have never heard of such a thing.

Is there anything like redemption guide?))))

[dorotea]

It is Mendelson's "March to the Scaffold" - rather appropriate, don't you think? The whole piece's background story was described by the composer as a 'march of the procession that brings the murderer, who killed his beloved in jealous rage, to the scaffold to be hanged."

Here is the link to the usage of the CLUA console

http://www.shsforums...showtopic=16779

[GarinaRayne]

First off, I want to say this was one of the most enjoyable mods I have ever played, enhancing the original game and giving me a plot-driven reason to go to Watchers Keep. The dialogue was brilliantly written with fantastic music, and I'm proud to say that my paladin managed to redeem Jon first time round without reading any hints on how to do it . I also really enjoyed the Deva Quest once I worked out how to transport Abaia, and I adored the Jon/Sarevok banter (yep, my paladin's a real believer in redemption ) Looking forward to playing through it again with different character and party mixes, seeing as I vastly prefer story/character based mods to tactics mods.

One thing I did notice was that I couldn't use Shadowkeeper with Jon in my party, as reloading the altered game caused it to crash. It wasn't an issue since I could use the console to create the item my bag of holding swallowed, but I was wondering what caused it. Any ideas?

[dorotea]

1.2) The Deva Quest - It seems somewhat bug-prone. For example, if you send the demon to the compass room immediately after it joins you, the yugoloth scene won't trigger automatically when you get the note and go to the room. You first have to send the demon away (say, to the level exit), then tell it to return to the compass room, and then follow it there.

In addition, two demons from the attacking group have remained neutral throughout the fight, and I had to manually attack them when it was done. The good demon also failed to recognize that I've collected all three items, and I had to re-send it to the same room a few times until it finally did.

6) Item Icons - Some of the new items the mod introduces to the game (books of elven lore, and some of the quest items) aren't "centered". Or in other words, their inventory icons don't behave as they should. Their active cursor is slightly above and to the side of the icon displayed, which just screams Unofficial Content. Fixing that would definitely help the mod blend into the game more seamlessly.

Excellent review - I liked most of the things you've picked , except probably for the music. I am sort of attached to this piece. Sadly though I have been away from modding for almost 5 years now and have no plans to return to LR. It took too much energy and almost consumed me at the time it was written-coded. I am still surprised we ever finished it...

Now if there was a modder willing to take over from me and do the tuning - as well as bring LR up-to date with modern WEIDU version and make it compatible with most of the newest mods - I would be more than happy to relinquish the mod and help review the changes. I don't think this is going to happen though - the task is too difficult and majority of people who mod Infinity engine these days want to see their own ideas implemented not work on improving somebody else's 5 year old mod.

Still, I thank you for the commentary.

[Yovaneth]

It is Mendelson's "March to the Scaffold" - rather appropriate, don't you think?

Nit-picking.... shouldn't that be Hector Berlioz's "The March to the Scaffold" from "Symphonie Fantastique"?

-Y-

[Stardusk]

It is Mendelson's "March to the Scaffold" - rather appropriate, don't you think?

Nit-picking.... shouldn't that be Hector Berlioz's "The March to the Scaffold" from "Symphonie Fantastique"?

-Y-

I think it is great, just so difficult to redeem Jon.....

[Miloch]

6) Item Icons - Some of the new items the mod introduces to the game (books of elven lore, and some of the quest items) aren't "centered". Or in other words, their inventory icons don't behave as they should. Their active cursor is slightly above and to the side of the icon displayed, which just screams Unofficial Content. Fixing that would definitely help the mod blend into the game more seamlessly.

BAM Batcher can fix these pretty easily, and all at once too (option #5 - Fix inventory BAM coordinates).

I have noticed some of the LR creatures are corrupted on my install, even though they are fine in the mod folder - ybsleep.cre is one example. Also, they seem to get corrupted at install time. This could be because there's no #requiredSize after the WRITE_ASCIIs in the .tp2. So you'd just add a #8 after each line for most things like portraits and scripts (#32 for a death variable I think). However, most of these don't even appear to be necessary, as they are hardcoded on the CREs before copying (a much better option anyway). Also, for this CRE, you're writing a script that doesn't exist (ybsleep) whereas the hardcoded one does (ybdiel).