[MOD] Eye of the Beholder 2 - The Legend of Darkmoon - Complete

[pscigulinsky]

You were settling in for an evening by the fire. Then...

...but you already know the story, right? Well, now you can relive it again!

This mod is a full recreation of the Eye of the Beholder 2 game. It is intended for the Level 1 party on normal mode.

LINKS:
NEXUSMODS (a Secret Guide also available)
STEAM

Since 31.03.2024, there is a longplay of this mod released on YouTube for version 1.2. Here is the link to the first episode out of 10. MaeL (the Youtuber) played it all from start to finish.

The mod includes full EOB2 storyline, levels and puzzles including events with options - but in the Grimrock engine with its original or modded spells, items, objects and monsters. You can think of it as an EOB2/Grimrock hybrid with as much of the EOB2 gameplay as possible given the limitations of my scripting ability and the available assets for Grimrock 1. I kept the layout of original EOB2 levels mostly unchanged with these exceptions:
- the level player starts in
- some secrets
- a special area related to recipes and spells
- a special area to include an aspect of the original EOB2 game I was unable to incorporate otherwise but I didn't want to leave out completely

Important note - some Grimrock 1 spells are cast differently, includes a couple of new spells.

I made this mod for three groups of people:

1. For those who had played the original EOB2 - to bring back familiar places of the Darkmoon Temple and the feeling of nostalgia, but also the excitement of seeing what is a little different from the original or tracking all the secrets.

2. For those who had never played the original EOB2 to encourage them to do so. It is still worth it even after a couple of decades.

3. For myself. I wanted to see, to what extent I would be able to recreate my favourite dungeon-crawler game and how I would enjoy it, once finished. I hope you will enjoy this mod at least as much as I did making it.

CREDITS
Grimwigdets - made by Xanathar, JKos, Thomson
(special thanks to minmay from Discord for help with figuring out the GUI image formatting)
Grimrock Model Toolkit - created by John Wordsworth

Mod wallsets used:
Exterior Asset Pack - created by odinsballs
Clean Dungeon Wallset - created by Neikun
Nightfall Wallset - created by DeDy
Southern Temple Wallset - created by Merethif

Other mod assets:
Grimwold's Magic Pack - created by Grimwold

Cultist - created by Tursas
The Isgardian - created by Neikun
Diseased Monsters - created by Neikun
Skeleton Ghost - created by Pandafox
Dragons - created by FrEEsiD

Alcoves And Gems Collection - created by LordYig
Keys And Locks Collection - created by LordYig
Custom Shields Pack - created by Merethif
Asteroth's Glass Walls - created by Asteroth6
Chitin Gloves and Lurker gloves - created by Radar6590

History of versions:
22.01.2024 - Added a Secret Guide for download

Version 1.3 - 17.04.2024
After watching the longplay of this mod from MaeL on YouTube, I had to fix a couple of things:
- fixed a couple of typos in the events
- added descriptions of some items that lacked them
- added a new recipe
- removed a couple of rogue spells that were part of some custom files I used and never realized they are there (Soul Fireball for example)
- fixed unwanted scavenger spawner secret button (now it is just a one-time only button)
- fixed a couple of minor bugs
- added some more food items and also options to get more food items

Version 1.2 - 19.01.2024 - reduced size to below 100 MB and uploaded on Steam, fixed a couple of typos and minor bugs.
Version 1.1 - 09.01.2024 - fixed a game-breaking Sentry bug
Version 1.0 - 08.01.2024

[Isaac]

Downloading now; it looks good so far.

*The trick with getting it to work with Steam (IIRC) is that it has to be just under 98mb. We had to always ensure that for ORRR2 builds.

[pscigulinsky]

*The trick with getting it to work with Steam (IIRC) is that it has to be just under 98mb. We had to always ensure that for ORRR2 builds.

Have fun with it Yeah, I learned about this 100 MB limitation on Steam far too late in the modding process. I considered leaving out the outdoor wallset, which would bring me down to around 90 MB, but the forest was already implemented and looked nice, so I let it be

[Isaac]

Thanks!
________________________________
Later on —if you decide to release the project file (public or privately), there might those here who would try to further optimize and compress the mod assets to reach the 98 MB limitation for a release on Steam; shaving bits off of the data from here and there, a little from everywhere.

When we were making the ORRR2 mod, we were often at double or triple the size of the final release.

[pscigulinsky]

Later on —if you decide to release the project file (public or privately), there might those here who would try to further optimize and compress the mod assets to reach the 98 MB limitation for a release on Steam; shaving bits off of the data from here and there, a little from everywhere.

I would love that, I am sure there is certainly room for "shaving". Would be interesting to see how little the file can get when the right people take a look at it Not really sure however, when I should ask for this kind of help, but I would love to see the mod on Steam as well.

[pscigulinsky]

Eventually I was able to reduce the size of the dungeon myself, so it is now being uploaded to Steam - link is in the first post.

[Isaac]

This is great news.

How did you manage it; retexture, resampled normal maps, simplified mesh models?...cleaned out redundant files?
(For the ORRR2 mod, we did all of the above.)

*Is the Nexus version updated to the new reduced Dat file?

[pscigulinsky]

It was actually easier than I thought. I didn´t realize before I never used all assets from custom wallsets I installed, so I simply removed the unused ones. Also I got rid of Clean Dungeon Wallset (Darkmoon never had clean dungeons in the first place ) which was featured in one level only so I remade the level using regular Dungeon Wallset. If I did everything you mentioned, it would be surely possible to reduce the size even more. But for now it is small enough for Steam, so mission accomplished

And yes, I uploaded the same version also to Nexus (1.2). In the meanwhile, I did another run and noticed a couple of minor bugs which I repaired but luckily there was nothing major. So unless someone finds a game-breaking bug, this should be the final version.

BTW: Does anyone know about any completed EOB1 remake for Grimrock? There are couple of unfinished ones over at Steam but I have trouble finding one that is actually finished.

[andyroosta]

Thanks for making this mod...just started a new game..looks good so far!

[pscigulinsky]

Thanks for making this mod...just started a new game..looks good so far!

Enjoy and please let me know, how you liked it or if you encountered anything to report. Thanks