[MOD] Eye of the Dragon

[NightLord]

considerable effort, but I finished it! Incredible adventure, congratulations to the author and collaborators. Fantastic.

[Drakkan]

considerable effort, but I finished it! Incredible adventure, congratulations to the author and collaborators. Fantastic.

I am glad you liked it. I am preparing some minor GUI enchancmnets, so there will be posibility to find Maradriel and having her in your party

[NightLord]

Great! Than I'll wait for enchancmnets and I'll play this mod again

[epeli]

There's an interesting bug in version 3 if you play with Grimrock version 1.3.1: The Magic Quill doesn't use up its ingredients! No crashes, no error messages in console, it just doesn't destroy the scrolls you put it. Might want to mention that this mod requires Grimrock 1.3.6 or newer.

Needless to say, this bug led me to an interesting twitch-based inventory-management playstyle, some easy fights and massive amounts of empty spell scrolls littering the dungeon - great for pressure plate puzzles, you won't have to carry extra junk, just use copied spells!


Now that I found out that it was a bug, I think I'm going to have to start a new game. Loving the map so far. Nicely themed, complex yet easy to navigate dungeon. Good story to back it up. Great use of custom assets. Like the new gameplay mechanics, having to find scrolls to learn spells is a great addition to any mod. One thing really irked me - you can't refill waterskins even though there are plenty of water sources around. Will probably post more feedback once I finish it. Played up to the timed battle in Moonmark Tower Level 2.

[Drakkan]

There's an interesting bug in version 3 if you play with Grimrock version 1.3.1: The Magic Quill doesn't use up its ingredients! No crashes, no error messages in console, it just doesn't destroy the scrolls you put it. Might want to mention that this mod requires Grimrock 1.3.6 or newer.

Needless to say, this bug led me to an interesting twitch-based inventory-management playstyle, some easy fights and massive amounts of empty spell scrolls littering the dungeon - great for pressure plate puzzles, you won't have to carry extra junk, just use copied spells!


Now that I found out that it was a bug, I think I'm going to have to start a new game. Loving the map so far. Nicely themed, complex yet easy to navigate dungeon. Good story to back it up. Great use of custom assets. Like the new gameplay mechanics, having to find scrolls to learn spells is a great addition to any mod. One thing really irked me - you can't refill waterskins even though there are plenty of water sources around. Will probably post more feedback once I finish it. Played up to the timed battle in Moonmark Tower Level 2.

thanks for this feedback man, I will definitely make note in readme that you need version 1.3.6 or higher to play this, nice catch ! about the refiling waterskins you are right, probably will add some fountain in next version (as water in temple underground is definitely poisoned

[epeli]

thanks for this feedback man, I will definitely make note in readme that you need version 1.3.6 or higher to play this, nice catch ! about the refiling waterskins you are right, probably will add some fountain in next version (as water in temple underground is definitely poisoned

Or you could allow unwary players to fill their waterskins with stagnant water (compare: Rotten Pitroot Bread), only to find out later when they're thirsty...
Unless scripting that would be too much of a hassle.

Oh, and another thing. Performance in the starting level, snow forest, is very bad.
Partly because of the lights and maybe particle effects (snowing), but the main cause is how Grimrock's occlusion culling seems to work. Because there are no real walls, the engine tries to draw everything within your sight radius, including all those spruce trees you can't even see. I did a bit of poking around with party:setPosition() & print(party.x,party.y) and found out there are some unnecessary objects (mostly invisible trees in the inaccessible forest areas, but also some tables and prison tileset blockages)

I know this is a hard level to fix due to the multiple wallsets used and tree wall transparency, but some suggestions:
- use walls in the forest geometry as much as possible. bonus: build the forest from secret doors so they don't appear as doors on map.
- use a custom wallset with invisible walls for this level. you could also have starry sky and snowy ground as its defaults.
- use as little separate lights as possible. for the moonlights, use as large custom lights as you can and set their shadows to false.
- remove the invisible objects (game will render them even if you can't see them if there's no wall inbetween!)

...or just wait for the Skuggasveinn's forest tileset, since you're planning to use it. I particularly like the spruce tree tileset, though. Did you make it yourself? Haven't seen a thread about it.

[Drakkan]

thanks for this feedback man, I will definitely make note in readme that you need version 1.3.6 or higher to play this, nice catch ! about the refiling waterskins you are right, probably will add some fountain in next version (as water in temple underground is definitely poisoned

Or you could allow unwary players to fill their waterskins with stagnant water (compare: Rotten Pitroot Bread), only to find out later when they're thirsty...
Unless scripting that would be too much of a hassle.

Oh, and another thing. Performance in the starting level, snow forest, is very bad.
Partly because of the lights and maybe particle effects (snowing), but the main cause is how Grimrock's occlusion culling seems to work. Because there are no real walls, the engine tries to draw everything within your sight radius, including all those spruce trees you can't even see. I did a bit of poking around with party:setPosition() & print(party.x,party.y) and found out there are some unnecessary objects (mostly invisible trees in the inaccessible forest areas, but also some tables and prison tileset blockages)

I know this is a hard level to fix due to the multiple wallsets used and tree wall transparency, but some suggestions:
- use walls in the forest geometry as much as possible. bonus: build the forest from secret doors so they don't appear as doors on map.
- use a custom wallset with invisible walls for this level. you could also have starry sky and snowy ground as its defaults.
- use as little separate lights as possible. for the moonlights, use as large custom lights as you can and set their shadows to false.
- remove the invisible objects (game will render them even if you can't see them if there's no wall inbetween!)

...or just wait for the Skuggasveinn's forest tileset, since you're planning to use it. I particularly like the spruce tree tileset, though. Did you make it yourself? Haven't seen a thread about it.

This is from yuleland wallset, not my work. I understand first level is bringing some issues to some machines (probably weaker ones, but not a condition). Your tips are cool, thanks. However as you said I planned Skuggs forest to be used... so for now I do not plan any changes. I think generally Grimrock has problems regarding these graphical issues, I know it is usually caused by many lights etc... but still its a issue. btw the invisible objects are there as blockers for party, no way to avoid using them. Trust me I tried lots of stuff to make this as little laggy as possible... no perfect but playable at least on most computers I hope
Thanks for comment

[Drakkan]

version 3b uploaded. As I have some problems with nexus uploading, not sure when upload will appear there. For now you can download from here:
http://www.ulozto.net/xWM1aWs/eyeofthedragon3b-zip

[Guardian]

Dear Drakkan (and others unbelievably talented modders who've contributed)

Thank you sooo much for the Eye of the Dragon - it was a pure pleasure to play it. Finished it, relishing every moment of it. All the puzzles were great and didn't require searching for the solutions online, though I admit that my braincells were sizzling on some of them but that's exactly how it should be! Also, that place with a malevolent whisper - masterpiece.

To be quite honest it was even better than original Grimrock campaign - I've liked all the environments and story, the notes were great tool to set the atmosphere while being perfectly made.

I hope I didn't write anything too spoilerish, I'll be looking forward to any of your further creation. I really lack words to properly describe how awesome adventure you've made and how much I've enjoyed it

P.S.

SpoilerShow

Check the spelling in the very last message - it says "this probably leads to Tran private chambers", not sure if you've fixed that already.
I will kill you - my goodness, what a brilliant part of the adventure it was!

[Drakkan]

Dear Drakkan (and others unbelievably talented modders who've contributed)

Thank you sooo much for the Eye of the Dragon - it was a pure pleasure to play it. Finished it, relishing every moment of it. All the puzzles were great and didn't require searching for the solutions online, though I admit that my braincells were sizzling on some of them but that's exactly how it should be! Also, that place with a malevolent whisper - masterpiece.

To be quite honest it was even better than original Grimrock campaign - I've liked all the environments and story, the notes were great tool to set the atmosphere while being perfectly made.

I hope I didn't write anything too spoilerish, I'll be looking forward to any of your further creation. I really lack words to properly describe how awesome adventure you've made and how much I've enjoyed it

P.S.

SpoilerShow

Check the spelling in the very last message - it says "this probably leads to Tran private chambers", not sure if you've fixed that already.
I will kill you - my goodness, what a brilliant part of the adventure it was!

Hello Guardian. Thanks a lot for this wonderfull review. I am of course very glad when somebody like what I have created. And as you said - it´s also work of other people which contributed with models and helped me with scripting etc, so this big thanks is for them as well. Thanks once again.