LotNR Project Official Thread [Open]

[Neikun]

_________________________________________________Legends of the Northern Realms_______________________________________________
_______________________________________________________Official Discussion & Info Thread_______________________________________________________

If you would like to contribute, please PM Neikun your Skype name.

• Development Status:
  Decided the starting location of the mod: Northern Trade Route
  Creating levels where levels beneath and above will be visible (In a logical fashion) Bug Testing
  Developing moving, changing, believable skyboxes with convincing backdrop models. Bug Testing
  Currently testing multi-mod import/export, Bug Testing
  Making the town wallset as thorough for cities as possible (With swing-open doors), Near Release
  Making the Great Library of Nothampton wallset Work in Progress
  Making a southern castle wallset Work in Progress
  Creating dialogue guis and functions, Creating as needed
  Developing the world, culture and religion of the Northern Realms! Long Work in Progress

Hello, wonderful Grimrock community!
This is an official thread dedicated to the discussion of the Legends of the Northern Realms Project. (LotNR Project)
For those unfamiliar with the project, our goal is to create a sort of "mega mod" where we can feature full towns with multiple dungeons and play areas within the world of the Northern Realms created by Almost Human Games ltd.
This project is to coincide with all existing lore while building lore of our own.
Almost Human has reserved the right to consider whatever parts of this project as "canon" lore wherever they see fit.

This is a huge project, and we urge everyone in the community to get involved in some way.

Thread Contents:

• Contributors
• Lore and World Information
• Features
• Project Specific Developer Requests

[Neikun]

Contributors
Meet our team!

• Juho Original Developer
  
  Neikun Lead Coordinator; Asset Generator
  Talents: Organization, Retexturing, Problem Solving, Writing, Concept Design, World Building, Level Design, Music
  
  Skuggasvienn Asset Generator
  Talents: Modeling, Texturing, Concept Design
  
  Phitt Asset Generator
  Talents: On Request Modelling
  
  Asteroth Asset Generator
  Talents: Retexturing, Simple modelling, Writing
  
  Merethif Asset Generator
  Talents: Artwork, Retexturing, Level Design, Concept Design
  
  Undeaddemon Asset Generator
  Talents: Artwork, Retexturing, Level Design, Concept Design, Writing,
  
  Radar6590 Asset Generator
  Talents: Artwork, Retexturing, Level Design, Concept Design
  
  Brodie301 Asset Generator
  Talents: Concept Design, Level Design, Modelling, Retexturing
  
  Mcskivv Level Designer
  Talents: Organization, Level Design, Concept Design
  
  Msyblade Level Designer
  Talents: Concept Design, Level Design, Simple Scripting, Troubleshooting, Writing
  
  Drakkan Level Designer
  Talents: Level Design, Concept Design, Testing, Quest Design
  
  Lupe Fenrir Level Designer
  Talents: Scripting, Level Design, Voice Acting
  
  Mahric Level Designer Scripter
  Talents: Scripting, Concept Design, Level Design, Organization
  
  Arkos Designer
  Talents: Concept Design, Testing
  
  John Smith Writer Hiatus
  Talents: Writing, Organization, Swift Learning
  
  Kuningas Writer
  Talents: Writing, Level Design, Simple Scripting, Concept Design
  
  Jawless Writer
  Talents: Writing, Concept Design
  
  Sam Colt Writer
  Talents: Writing, Level Design, Concept Design
  
  Centauri Soldier Scripter Hiatus
  Talents: Scripting, Concept Design, Support, Wiki
  
  Diarmuid Scripter Asset Generator
  Talents: Scripting, Spell Maker, Problem Solving, Level Design, Concept Design, Music, Retexturing, Modeling
  
  John Wordsworth Scripter
  Talents: Scripting, External tools, Level Design, Concept Design
  
  Thomson Scripter
  Talents: Scripting

[Neikun]

Lore and World Information
General Information on the Northern Realms

Map of the Northern Realms

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Map With Territory Shading

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Northern Realms and Their Real World Comparisons
As stated by Juho

Kingdom of Theraen - Britain
Capital city, Nothampton,
Ruled by King Konrak II the Wise (Referred to as His Grace)

Malanian Empire -Anglo Saxon
Capital city, Malan Tael
Ruled by Emperor Arefar fe Sancconjon

Quenfar, Losancrel, Qegandoc - Burgundy/Franks/France
As well as neighboring areas were once an kingdom before the Malanian Empire conquered it.
Governors:
Quenfar - Guillaume Sovié
Losancrel - Nurmina Alcoff (Widow to Ageron Alcoff. She took his place after he died.)
Qedandoc - Eduin Perte

Surrounding lands of Icefall Bay - Scandinavia

Shards - Iceland/Svalbard

Frostbites and north- Himalaya/Northpole

Endless Tundra - Siberia

Jungles of Xaae - India/southeast Asia
Actually are subtropical but east to Serpent river starts proper jungles

Isle of Nex - Crete/Greece
Ruled by religious order.

Harbardar - Middle East

Xafi Desert and south - Africa/Egypt

[Neikun]

Features
What you'll find in the mod when it's released.

• Town Wallsets; Interior and Exterior
• Open World feel gameplay where the player decides what order to do something in.
• Npcs with dialog and quests
• Expansion of the Northern Realms lore
• Time line that takes place after the events at the end of Legend of Grimrock.

-More to come-

[Neikun]

Project Specific Developer Requests
What we'd like help from Almost Human to pull things off.

Enemy AI State = Friendly:
Current Status: Mostly doable with tools provided.

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We are taking a serious look at developing npc characters for the player to interact with. It would be to the benefit of all mods to be able to define a "monster" as friendly. This would mean it wouldn't chase the player, and certainly wouldn't try to attack the player.
There are a couple suggestions as to how we would like this done.
1. Create a new brain that denies attacking and chasing of the player.
2. Have a friendly = true/false, Boolean. It would be exceptionally useful if the Boolean could be changed by player action (Say the player attacks a friendly creature, it switches back to hostile)

Ability to add pages to the character sheet:
In the default character sheet:

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We have three pages. Inventory, Stats, and Skills
We would like to be able to add more pages,
Character description or quest log for example.
You might argue that you could create a separate gui for it, but it would feel so much more natural to do it in the character sheet.

Import Party Functionality
Current status: Made Possible by the LotNR Scripting Team

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What we need from the Import Party feature is a way for it to check if it's part of a mod series, and import the party fully (all items and states) if imported into a mod of that series.

Any information that helps us build the culture and lives of the Northern Realms
I.e. Religions, ect

[Neikun]

Everyone, feel free to comment and post suggestions here.

[msyblade]

Even if you don't feel you have the time for another project; any assets, dungeons, or content anyone would like to contribute could help a lot. This is a big job, and creative content is already at a premium.

[Centauri Soldier]

I noticed some concern regarding a few issues with scripting (nothing negative just concern). I want to share with everyone what I said in chat.

"Let me back up a second and say, all of the level designers will have access to these tools I'm building. As far as I'm concerned, my job is to find out what you want and get those script tools to you. They will be simple to use and have very detailed explanations. They are meant as support tools for you. I'm support for you. Just tell me what you need...
All the things I'm building now are directly related to a request or anticipation of a request."

These tools are meant to be used by the level designer during the process. Let me know what you need ahead of time and I'll start work on that so you have what you need. I'm currently working on the obvious items in the framework but can divert to build any tools you need.

[undeaddemon]

Scripting for us "limited scripting skillz types" is at time a huge barrier.

Its very 'tough' to have to ask for help - 'so often' - sometimes - when you want to accomplish something, but have no idea how...

This is really welcoming to hear!
Thanks for saying it.

[Neikun]

-Extras post has been re-purposed to a dev's request log.

@Centauri, part of the reason I have defined the contributors by "job" title with relevance to their talents is that I don't want anyone to be taking the brunt of this mod as a whole. It is important to spread the work out and everyone contribute what their good at. Level designers with little scripting know-how should meet with scripters when they want to pull off something unique. Or meet with the asset generators if they want a specific object. The size of the project demands that we work as a well functioning team. I hope it brings us all closer together in the end of things.
So glad to see you caught on to my plan.