update for Savage Empire & other cool things

[Scythifuge]

Communication between Crowley & Agentorangeguy have been fruitful! Agentorangeguy is helping with some scripting for objects & I have offered to assist with some sprites for his Exult Ultima VI mod. The carnivorous orchid from Savage Empire & the Tangle Vine from Ultima VI are very similar, so I have started some preliminary work on that as well as the plant-like hydra from Ultima VI.

Crowley has provided a full set of animated frames for the Nauhuatla noble that I showed off in an earlier screenshot. He did an AMAZING job! These are the situations that help these projects along & make things come together. Of course, I am here to help these two & anyone else working with Exult in anyway that I can.

My work on Savage Empire as of late has been reviewing current sprites & organization of canvases. Things can get a little chaotic with sprites, concept sprites, failed sprites, & potential sprites on multiple canvases all over the place! After some tidying up, I will go back to finishing up the mountain walls which still need grass frames & then tested, & then it is back to trees.

[Crowley]

Aww, you are making me blush.

[Crowley]

If I may be allowed to make a suggestion for the mod here, how about making the Myrmidex tunnels structured more like a real ant nest? Some rooms dedicated to storing food, and others for eggs and larvae? Me and agentorangeguy have been planning the same thing for the ant mound in Ultima 6, and I'll be making some graphics for the eggs and larvae which you'll be free to use once they're done.

[Scythifuge]

Thank you Crowley! I like that idea. I definitely want the tunnels to be both dangerous & fun to explore while being set up logically. Of course storing food means storing the bodies of small dinosaurs & unfortunate residents of the valley...

I wonder if there could be a flag set to reduce the number of Myrmidex attacks if the player manages to destroy the eggs & larvae.

[Dominus]

I think you can make eggs that check for usecode flags or usecode eggs. Not sure though, as usual with world building stuff

[Crowley]

It would be interesting to have some reason to make forays into the Myrmidex caves before the endgame. The food storage could contain human corpses, along with some of their belongings. If you are making new quests where you need to retrieve an item from some dangerous place, I think that would be a good candidate for its location.

[Scythifuge]

One idea that I had would be to fill portions of the caves with lava flows by using crafted bombs, probably underneath the lands of the Jukari.

I am partially inspired by the final battle in Dark Sun: Shattered Lands where some plot characters could die. In S.E., reducing the number of Myrmidex could reduce attacks & leave less to fight during the final battle. Survivors could be at the celebration during the end game sequence.

I like the idea of giving the player incentives to venture into the tunnels. There could be a rescue quest to save someone who is in the egg room who will be devoured otherwise.

[Crowley]

The bomb idea sounds interesting. Programming-wise, I think the easiest way to handle the change in the caves would be to have two maps, one for intact caves and another for ones with lava. Then have the teleport egg for the entrance change accordingly. And for that to make sense the most, the bombs should only go off once you are outside the map... How about Doctor Rafkin insisting that he should put together a remote detonation system using metallic wires (copper, I guess) and a primitive battery? As established, the gunpowder is so unstable that it shouldn't take much of a spark to go off. You could have Rafkin craft something akin to the Baghdad battery, maybe even using formic acid from the Myrmidex for the acid? I'm not sure where you might get the necessary metals.

[Paulon]

Wire should be available in the lab, whether as basic supplies or from the power cables of equipment that won't work without the electrical mains. Copper metal in larger pieces could be salvaged from the plumbing perhaps?

[Scythifuge]

All very good ideas! There are many possible scenarios. Of course, this all depends on what is possible via usecode.

As far as plumbing, I was thinking that the black gate in the lab would function similar to the vortex ball in the move "The Arrival."

[Crowley]

Another possibility for the battery would probably be to make sulphuric acid by combining the goo from sulphur pits and water. I'm not up on my chemistry, but I think that's close enough to reality.

Where did the Myrmidex have tunnel openings in the original game anyway? I remember three off the top of my head: by Seggallion's abode, near the teleporter hub and from the spider caves.

[Yazman]

I can't code for @!#$ anymore (quit almost a decade ago) and I've never done graphics, so I don't know if I can really help, however.

I really, really, really want to help. Is there ANYTHING I can help out with in some way?

[Scythifuge]

Crowley,

I can look into the battery thing. I also would have to get back to you on all of the entrance ways into the tunnels. In order to conquer the valley & have access to food, I envision the Myrmidex digging new tunnels & entrance ways closer to tribal lands. Due to their moonstone-granted intelligence, I also envision them keeping captives in order to breed them for food although possibly losing grip on sanity because of the moonstone's corrupted nature.

Yazman,

I can't think of anything as we are still in the graphics stage with a small bit of coding. Also, because of the holiday & a random work schedule, I am behind on some S.E. stuff & a couple of things for Agentorangeguy. Thank you for the offer though! Keep following the project & you never know when a skill that you may have will be useful!

[Yazman]

Alright, well if there's anything that needs doing, maybe I could help with transferring the SE script to the U7 format or whatever at some point.

Or hell, anything. I'll stick around and maybe I can help out with something at some point lol.

[ideaforyazman]

Here's an idea for you Yazman: there's several broken quests in u6 that still need dialogue so they can be fixed. Maybe you could try to find out how the U6 Dungeon siege team solved those and try to write some dialogue for this project? Now that I think of it, doesn't the entire dialogue tree need work anyway? May or may not be tedious work though ...

[Yazman]

That's a good idea, I should be able to find out some info on that. I'll need to track down which quests in particular though are broken.

[Yazman]

Sorry I was thinking about it in the wrong way. I get what you mean now. I'll see if I can get in touch with the right people and ask them about it.

[_HoppyDragon]

Hey, I'm really interested in the Savage Empire mod and would like to extend an opportunity to help with graphics, if you need any. I just recently got back into poking around with Exult and Exult Studio and would like to work on something.

My only alternative is to continue work on an old project to create all of the armor for a Spark paperdoll I made a few years ago.

Here is a link to a thread with some of my previous work including the Spark papredoll I mentioned.
http://exult.info/forum/viewtopic.php?p=277061#p277061

Also I would like to clarify that this isn't solely an offer to do paperdoll graphics, but I will do my best to take a stab at whatever you may need.

[HoppyDragon2]

I was able to dig up some work I did on a sprite for the Avatar that was intended to resemble the Avatar in Ultima VI. I'd be happy to continue it for the Ultima VI mod if any help is needed there as well.

[HoppyDragon2]

Goofed on the embed code.

[agentorangeguy]

Hoppy, I wants it!!!!

that looks awesome!

[agentorangeguy]

Hoppy we could always use some help on custom sprites and stuff. email me at my forum screenname at yahoo.