[Preview] Requiem for Kraken's Arm

[Eleven Warrior]

Very cool Minmay. How did you do the Rain Effect and will you release this effect to the community to use, I would be cool with skuggs winter Snowwing Effect.

[minmay]

And yes, the entirety of the mod's assets will be released for public use at the same time the mod is, under the most permissive licensing possible; same situation as Lost Halls of the Drinn. The way licensing information is listed in the source is also greatly improved: every file has a corresponding .txt file detailing all sources used and the resulting most permissive possible license. Most assets are CC BY or CC 0 compatible with some CC BY-NC.

The rain is simply a ParticleComponent attached to the party.

[minmay]

On Accessibility
These rules were finalized long, long ago but I forgot to put them in the original post, so I'm just going to post them now.
- The mod tries to thoroughly accommodate colour weakness/blindness and anything that would impair hearing audio (deafness or just preferring to play with the sound off).
- In Lost Halls of the Drinn, colour vision and sound were never remotely required, but they did make a few puzzles slightly easier. It is a goal of mine to ensure that this does not happen in this mod or a future one.

- Colour is never used as part of a puzzle (or anything else important to gameplay) anymore.

- There is a "deafness" option that, when on, will give visual indicators of important sounds.
- When sound is used as part of a puzzle, or something audible and important happens in the environment, text is printed, e.g. "You hear a click." A message like "You hear a door open about 20 meters to the northeast" is printed whenever a door opens.
- I am still trying to figure out a good system for visually indicating the activities of off-screen monsters. Fortunately Grimrock 2 allows the scripting interface to figure out where the camera is pointing (by inspecting the party object's transformation matrix), but accurately determining a monster's visual position is still problematic because of animation.

- There's also a separate "subtitles" option for dialogue. Voices can also be enabled/disabled independently from other audio. Note that all of the dialogue in the mod happens during boss fights and is one-sided.

- There are no puzzles that require speed or timing, and combat can be disabled entirely, so any controls-related impairment will hopefully not be relevant.

- The target for visual clues is that they should be at least as large and readable as the font used for wall text.

- Unfortunately, the mod does not support complete blindness. Converting everything into an audible or screen-readable format is a lot of work, and since the original Grimrock 2 campaign is utterly unplayable without vision, the size of the affected userbase is most likely 0.

For comparison: The original Grimrock 1 and 2 dungeons do not require or particularly benefit from colour vision anywhere I can recall, but both have important audio clues. In Grimrock 2, a puzzle that is required to finish the game relies heavily on audio. In mods, of course, there are lots and lots of puzzles that are utterly impossible without sound or with colour weakness.

[THOM]

May I ask, how's the state of this project?

Especially the snow tileset would be interesting, therefore we have the one of Skuggasveinn meanwhile. It would be interesting to see your solution...

[minmay]

The state of this project is "under development".

[minmay]

Quick screenshots of the mostly-finished Floating Gardens. Click to view, if your screen isn't wide enough for them to fit in the forum style.

SpoilerShow

Some models still need adjustment...

This level is a real pain in the ass to work on, standing at 3858 manually placed objects at the moment. It's easily the most CPU-intensive and GPU-intensive level in the mod, but I have made options available to alleviate that (you can turn off reflections for example).
The level doesn't have a single combat encounter, but it's the primary location for one of the mod's overarching riddles, and one of the first available to visit.
Also of note: there's not a single custom texture in these screenshots except for the power orb.

edit: fixed screenshot 2, not sure why imgur wants to butcher it so badly...

[Duncan1246]

....

All that I read here give me the feeling that you create a new game using the LOG2 editor tools rather than a standard LOG2 mod. I hope that your concern of perfection will not deprive us too long of the pleasure of this discovery. You have technical skills which allow you to modify the in-depth game, what is inaccessible to me as mostly of the modders, so the elements of the release will be an invaluable contribution to the community.
Even if I am not a purist on the technical plan (especially because I can't ), I am tired of the bunch of unfinished mods released too soon, roughtly tested, with stories of little interest or no story at all! In all cases, they suppose plenty of hours spent in hard work, but work is nothing without at least one idea or two... and some critical spirit. I stop here before some guys thinks I am a troll...
Waiting your prequel
Duncan

[minmay]

Although a lot of effort has been put into combat, the main focus of the gameplay is still puzzles. There are a lot of puzzles; over 100. If you're having trouble winning fights, try solving more puzzles to get more power orbs and better equipment. Of course, you'll also need to solve quite a few puzzles just to reach new parts of the isle.
As I've mentioned earlier, puzzles never involve pixel hunting (there are no secret buttons), never require speed or timing, and never require sound or colour vision. If you get stuck in spite of that, hints and solutions are available in-game, at any time, with no penalties attached.
There's an in-game journal that automatically updates with information you've gathered about puzzles and plot details. You can add your own notes to the journal, too, but chances are you won't need to; if you find something worthy of writing down or taking a screenshot of, the journal and the automap will most likely have done it for you already. (Did I mention that there are automap icons for every puzzle, button, lock, lever, etc.?)



(Wall textures in screenshots 2 and 3 are placeholders, and will be improved.)
Also, a clarification. Although this mod is taking a fairly long time, it's not actually delaying the sequel by very much. Most of the assets and code made for this mod will be used in the sequel too, that's the point of it. The bosses, puzzles, and level layouts won't be reused, obviously, but those represent a relatively small portion of the time spent.

[THOM]

This is looking very promising...

[Gradunk]

i'll happily test everything of yours minmay! cant wait