It’s been a while since my last blog post, so I wanted to give everyone an update on the status of my building activities for the Sanctum of the Archmage module series.
First, a bit of good news. Some of my readers may know that I’ve been splitting my time for the last several years between a full-time job, working on a graduate degree in physics, my work for the AME, and of course building the Sanctum modules. I’m happy to be able to announce that I’m now on the verge of being able to close out one of those projects. Just a few days ago, I completed my final requirement for graduation in January (a paper that I should be submitting sometime within the next week). Perhaps not surprisingly, this has been occupying most of my focus and attention for the last two months. So if all goes as expected, a major block of free time should begin to open up for me to begin building again in November.
My next step will be to complete the final update to Sanctum 2, and then to move on in earnest to Sanctum 3. Although my new ridable pegasi are now working in Sanctum 2, I still need to decide exactly how to handle a few issues regarding how to work them into the plot. Should I give the player a choice between Ridable Pegasi and Wind-Walking, or get rid of Wind-Walking altogether? How should I handle it if you get your mounts killed in battle? Should you be able to summon new ones, and if so how frequently? (If anyone has any advice or thoughts on that, please feel free to opine. :)) I’m working out those issues now, and trying to write the scripts I’ll need to make whichever solution I decide on work seamlessly in-game.
I also have a couple of final tweaks and updates to make to the module in general, such as (for example) updating the “Flooded Cave” battle. I had some very good feedback on that battle from a player, which made it clear to me that I need to make a serious effort to hack the standard monster AI for that encounter to make it more realistic.
Finally, there are NinjaWeaselMan’s Romantic animations. I corresponded with him recently, and the updated version of his hak (which will include some additional animations that I need for my update to Sanctum 2, such as hugging) should be ready in about 2 weeks. I’ve got the code ready for these animations now, so hopefully I should be able to just plug in the final version of the hak when it’s ready.
I hope to have a beta version of Sanctum 2, version 3.2, available sometime in November, and (hopefully) to be able to release it next month as well. And then, after that, it will be on to Sanctum 3!
Congrats on finishing the paper. No easy task there! I was really impressed by the Romantic animation you had posted earlier. Good luck on finishing Sanctum 2. I rummaged through my software just the other night looking for my NWN1 CD in case I wanted to install it again, and perhaps I’ll do that to play through the Sanctum series.
Congratulations! I’m struggling through my first year of an undergraduate degree, which seems to eat up most of my spare time, so to earn a graduate degree while you have a full time job and this, which has got to be time consuming, is an incredible achievement. It must be a really great feeling.
Hmm, I can see why you are having dilemmas about the Pegasus. I like the idea of having the Pegasus as the primary choice, but playing as a mage, the wind walker outfit is a great suit of armour, which I would be sad to lose. Though I have no idea how hard this would to implement, maybe it would be possible to combine it in somehow. Maybe the character could be given the wind walker outfit to serve as some sort of safety device, with the idea that if your mount is killed, you won’t fall to your death? Then you could either wind walk the rest of the way, or wait for a replacement Pegasus. As to replacements, I prefer the idea of just the one re-summon, mainly because it wouldn’t seem right if appeared there were unlimited numbers of Pegasus to use. But anyway, it sounds like you are making a great game even better, can’t wait to play, plus I will be finished uni by November which means I can play without a guilty conscience!
I just discovered the Sanctum Series and this blog, and I wanted to say that your modules are amazing! The story and the characters are very believable. I also like how everything you do is important in advancing the story or emphasizing the setting, no annyoing fetch-quests or pointless dungeons you have to hack you’re way through.
I see you’re making one final upgrade to the SoAII, I just started playing that, but I think I’ll wait for the final version, as it looks like you’re adding some major things. I still have a save somewhere near the end of the first module so I can continue the romance.
Great to hear that work is coming along well, I’ve been really looking forward to playing both the new edition and the sequels. I’m excited to use the Pegasus and would be willing to lose the wind walking all together. If people are worried about loosing the suit you could just sell it or give it away somewhere at Mt. Cassandra, minus the flying ability. I would personally like a Pegasus with high hit points and zero re-summons. If your ride dies then you die too. Well done on finishing all your requirements for your grad degree too, must have been a ton of hard work.
Firstly, congratulating for finishing your paper! I’m also graduating at the end of this year, so I know how good it feels!
Regarding the Pegasi issue, at first I thought to get rid of the wind-walking altogether, but it is possible, as you said, that the pegasi could be killed during the journey (which would be so sad). And although I don’t know much about wildlife in the Nurian mountain, I didn’t think there would be many (if any) pegasi to find as replacement there. So I was thinking that perhaps you can keep both options of riding the pegasi and wind-walking. No doubt Robin’s grandmother would still be worried about her/him, and give her/him the wind-walking cloak anyway. So the PC could choose either options anyway (although I would rather go with my pegasi all the way! I figure it would be warmer for my PC to have the pegasi to cuddle!). And when you’re about to start the journey, make Robin or Orion (depend on who you choose to have with you on the journey) asked how you want to travel, using pegasi or wind-walking.
Well, that’s what I think at any rate! If you need help with the beta in November, I’ll be more than happy to help (since I would have finished all my exams by then!)
And Yay for the romantic animations!
Could characters who choose a pegasi have a wind walking cloak as a backup? If you were on a pegasi and it died could you continue with your wind walking cloak? The pegasi could also be highly resistant to wind and lightning
Everyone, thanks for your comments! A couple of quick points:
– Since I’ve already put so much effort into developing the Wind-Walking features, I’m strongly leaning toward leaving that in as an option rather than trying to remove it. The thing I’m wrestling with is how to do that while still creating a good story-based reason (beyond “I like horsies” ;)) for riding the pegasi.
– I’ve been working several versions of the “Cloak of Flying as safety device” concept, and am likely to settle on that. The cloak is definitely not going to be going away, although it may change form. I’d like to make it an actual cloak rather than armor, so as not to cramp the style of armor-wearing players; but unfortunately cloaks aren’t rendered while you’re either in the riding or flying (Wind-Walking) phenotypes. I did think that the cape was an appropriate touch for a Cloak of Flying, and I’d hate to lose that by switching to a cloak.
– It’s not going to be possible to get the pegasi killed while riding them. That’s because of the way that riding works in NWN1. When mounted, you and your steed actually become a single creature, so you live or die together. If you wind-walk with your pegasi following you, though, it would be possible. So I either have to disallow that (make it either-or, Wind-Walking or riding), or provide for mixing the two and for what to do if one or more of your mounts get killed.
Anyway, I’m going to get started on trying to work this out. Thanks again for all of your ideas!
Aderyn: the pegasi are actually native only to the Nurian mountains, so it would in fact be reasonable to encounter more of them while flying or wind-walking. The unique covenant that they formed with the pegasi that they found there is part of what makes the elves who settled the Nurian Mountains five hundred years ago who they are: namely, the “Mountain Elves.” They’re an almost symbiotic culture, and distinctively so, since pegasi are incredibly rare anywhere else in the world.
One of the features I was thinking of adding to the Cloak of Flying was the ability to summon pegasi, a la a “summon creature” type of power. But I don’t want to let the player be able exploit that power — for example, by going into battle with three pegasi in the party as backup, and then just summon three more at will if he gets them killed. How exactly to handle that kind of thing is what I’m thinking over right now.
Is there a script that can check how many pegasi you have in the party and then set a limit number on how many pegasi you can have at one time? I’m not entirely familiar with how scripting works, but maybe you can
– Set the limit to the number of party members that PC is allowed to have at one time?
– Can you make a conversation check when you use the summoning to make sure that PC don’t have more than a specific no. of pegasi at a time?
– Make it so that you can only summon one (or however many) pegasi per day, and mark the Nurian Mountain area with ‘no resting allowed’ so that the PCs wouldn’t be able to summon hordes of pegasi the aid them in battle (and thereby ruin all the fun in the fighting)?
Also, I think that if the party choose to travel by riding pegasi, they should not be allowed to dismount during the journey (since they will fall off and very likely get themselves killed), but whether this restriction is possible to implement or not I confess I have no idea.
And about adding a ‘summon pegasi’ feature to the flying cloak, wouldn’t it be more exciting to have another item entirely, something like a whistle, to summon pegasi, rather than just put every feature into the cloak? 🙂
Hi Aderyn,
I’ve actually already written most of the scripts you’re describing. The way it will work is that when a pegasus joins the party, they are assigned to a specific rider (so their description will say, for example, “Orion’s Pegasus Quest Mount”). The scripts won’t create more than one pegasus per companion.
The kind of situation I’m fretting about, though, would be if you get into a fight while not mounted, and all three of your steeds get killed. I don’t want you to be able to just summon three new pegasi in that case. The options I’m considering are letting you summon one new pegasus per day (so that you can eventually get the full complement back, but it would take time), and/or forcing you to fall back on wind-walking for anyone without a steed.
I can indeed prevent anyone from dismounting while in the flying areas, and that’s how I have it set up now. (They’re also already set up as “no resting” areas.) However, I’ve been thinking about changing that to allow you to dismount while flying, as long as you’re wearing the cloak (which after all is supposed to allow you to wind-walk). Whichever way I go with that, though, I have to make sure the scripts enforce how that works consistently.
I did think about making the “Pegasus Management” item different from the cloak (I’d originally envisioned it as either a belt or an amulet). I was leaning toward adding them to the cloak because it would be neater having all of your “travel options” keyed off of one item. Thanks for your thoughts, though — perhaps I’ll reconsider that option. 🙂
How about Robin’s grandmother (the elf queen) giving them a horn (or something) to call the pegasi as a gift to her grandchild (and company). The elves have a compact with the pegasi and the queen is interested in keeping her grandchild safe? Since some fast means of travel is need to summon allies the gift is appropriate and of mutual benefit.
I don’t know if anyone is still reading the comments on these old posts, but I thought I’d follow up on this, since I’ve now written and completed all of the pegasus-related updates to Sanctum 2. I won’t spoil what I decided about the “pegasus management item,” but handling the possibility of dying pegasi turned out to be much easier than I’d expected.
For some reason it didn’t occur to me that the very forgiving henchman bleeding system that I had already written would work for the pegasi as well, since mounts are treated as henchmen by the game. They’ll fall in combat just like your other companions, and can be revived using the Companion Healing Kits — so it will actually be very difficult for them to get permanently killed. And since you’ll be able to summon a limited number of replacements and switch at will between riding pegasi and wind-walking, there’ll always be a contingency available in the unlikely case that that does happen.