Incline Knights of the Chalice 2 - Editor & Module Creation

[Dorateen]

Here is an example of an encounter I originally designed in IceBlink with 5th level characters in mind, particularly a wizard with access to fireball. Sixteen bugbears against a party of six. It sets up nice to potentially blow through their ranks with a massive area of effect spell. However, in the KotC version of Hearkenwold, I've reach this point of the campaign with a level four party. In this case, a web from the ranger proves to be invaluable. Would have been better if he rolled initiative.

Spoiler

It is a challenging fight, trying to whittle away their numbers while keeping from being overrun. Still, I have been adding more encounters to other maps, so coming back later to this optional area will remain viable. The non-linear structure allows a great degree of flexibility in how and when a player approaches the content.

 

[Dorateen]

Some more screenshots as I continue to progress through the porting of the Hearkenwold campaign into the Knights of the Chalice 2 engine. In this conversation below, after a paladin party member vows to save the village, a rogue character has the opportunity to express concern.

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Later on, jumped by assassins on the road.

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Here is some descriptive narration.

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As the image above would indicate, I've reached the point where I am starting work on Fortress Relmfur. This is encouraging as I expected to be on that area in December, so it is nice to have a head start. That still leaves the sprawling city of Skardale, which will get much attention next month. Once I have these two landmarks roughly completed, I am going to begin on the class guild adventures and that should have this project wrap up in the first couple of months of the New Year.

 

[anvi]

Is it nearly finished yet :<

 

[Dorateen]

During the past week, I've been working on the Fortress location. This was always a favorite map to recreate, I like the combination of wall set and tiles, including the statuary. Here the party gains an audience with the Duke of Relmfur.

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I have also just reached the city of Skardale, which is built from multiple interconnected screens featuring points of interest, shops and the homes of citizens. These citizens are NPCs who might give information, quests or even turn into a hostile encounter. The bulk of next month's work will involve adding this content.

Spoiler

Finally, I downloaded the new Knights of the Chalice 2 Guidebook, hoping to gain some tips that will help me get a better grasp on what I'm doing. I wanted to print it out, but it's 330 pages. I'll be taking some time to go through this comprehensive manual.

 

[Dorateen]

Following up on the NPCs who populate the city of Skardale, here are a couple of interactions from some of the locals who can be found in different districts. These range in purpose from giving some background information as well as contributing to the general atmosphere. In the first, there is mention of the Arena, which is an optional location the party can visit to fight for gold and prestige.

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And here is an example of entering a home with a hostile occupant. In this case, a Summoner who summons stuff such as slimes.

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[Darth Canoli]

Are the black tiles final?
I'd rather have a sand Coloured paving, in black, it just feels empty/ unfinished.

Aside from that

 

[Dorateen]

The black tiles with the white spots are a characteristic of Skardale. The streets are said to be paved black and speckled to resemble the night sky. Any squares that are solid black are just unrevealed, and will be cleared when the party moves over the tile.

 

[Dorateen]

I've been mostly working on the city content for the past week. However, there are still lots of things that can happen out in the wilderness. Like a dragon swooping down upon the party.

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I really wish our wizard had the fireball spell for this battle.

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In hindsight, should have fled the dragon.

But maybe we will have better luck against a trio of Necromancers.

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Alas, the enemy rolled initiative and was able to scare everyone in the party except our cleric. That silence spell came too late. And so the fun of KotC combat continues!

 

[Dorateen]

Just for fun, I made a quick video of Hearkenwold in the KotC2 engine. Here the party thinks it would be a good idea to explore an abandoned tower. Will they regret it?

 

[MrScruffy]

Hi! Quick question: I'm trying to build a very simple module, but when I create the pcs they start without any gear... how can I make the module automatically give the new pcs at least some basic stuff? Thank you!

 

[Dorateen]

how can I make the module automatically give the new pcs at least some basic stuff?

In the Script Editor, there is a command 102 that will Distribute basic equipment to the party members. You need to create a script with this command and place it at the beginning of your module. That should do the trick.

 

[MrScruffy]

how can I make the module automatically give the new pcs at least some basic stuff?

In the Script Editor, there is a command 102 that will Distribute basic equipment to the party members. You need to create a script with this command and place it at the beginning of your module. That should do the trick.

Thanks! Another quick one: is dynamic lighting possible? Because adding torch or isometric lights doesn't seem to do anything special

 

[Dorateen]

If you select from the Other Tools menu Add Activable Objects and Light Particles, then click on the torchlight you placed, it will open up a box where you can fiddle with some settings such as color and sound, and halo. Later, I am going to try to set a light as hidden and then make it visible via a script to simulate lighting a beacon.

 

[Dorateen]

Hanging out in the Village of Hamhock

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I mentioned in another thread that there would be a selection of crossbows in Hearkenwold. For example, this beauty is available to purchase, and offers some protection from fire.

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As long as the party is here, might as well pick out a tree for Yule.

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I haven't talk much about the Dwarven Halls. It is a separate side adventure that I included last year, self contained, although it does have a tangential connection to the campaign. In a way, it is sort of an unofficial seventh guild quest, completely optional and waiting for characters of 5th level or higher to explore. I will be working on this content at the same time I am recreating the guild quests, starting in January.

 

[Kruno]

Hanging out in the Village of Hamhock

Spoiler

I mentioned in another thread that there would be a selection of crossbows in Hearkenwold. For example, this beauty is available to purchase, and offers some protection from fire.

Spoiler

As long as the party is here, might as well pick out a tree for Yule.

Spoiler

I haven't talk much about the Dwarven Halls. It is a separate side adventure that I included last year, self contained, although it does have a tangential connection to the campaign. In a way, it is sort of an unofficial seventh guild quest, completely optional and waiting for characters of 5th level or higher to explore. I will be working on this content at the same time I am recreating the guild quests, starting in January.

Reminds me of a mix between Exile: Escape from the Pit and Ultima.

 

[fax_]

This thread is great - appreciate all the info people sharing.
That said, I'm stumped on how to get custom sprites into the right 8-bit PNG format.

There is an excellent tool here which, once compiled with maven/JDK, can extract the assets from dark sun (including crimson sands, which has some nice extra creature sprites and stuff the devs pulled in from al-qadim due to time/budget constraints), from which I can get the original TIFFs. I can then

1. batch convert to PNG (with transparency)
2. batch adjusted the size and positioning (unfortunately dark sun object/creature/character assets all have different dimensions).
3. batch convert to 8-bit transparent PNG

I did step 1/2 with BIMP/GIMP (but will use Xnconvert going forward. BIMP is awful)
I've tried step 3 with Xnconvert, BIMP and PNGquant. Xnconvert doesnt preserve transparency. BIMP/PNGquant do, but when I test in the Graphics>Sprites>PlayerCharacter folder, I am unable to get them to appear in play in KOTC2. As noted in first page of this thread - I can select the sprite on the character sheet, but it is fully transparent in game.

What stupid thing have I done wrong, guys?
I've uploaded my test images here (and yes, I realise I have an extra 4th walking frame for right/left).

If anyone can help, I'll happily share the rest of my extracted TIFFs from dark sun 1-3, to save the trouble of messing around with java. To be honest, even solving for above, someone else can probably think of a cleverer way of mass converting them to be usable with KOTC2. Would love to see fan made modules with dark sun assets (which is also what I want to do...)

 

[The Red Knight]

What stupid thing have I done wrong, guys?

The suffix is "_F03D04_directionNUMBER", where direction is B (bottom), L (left), R (right) or T (top) and NUMBER is frame number. I wonder if it's F for the total number of frames and D for how many directions?

So: add the missing "_F03D04" mystery bit and change your D to B for looking south.

(unless the D works in the current version? I haven't got enough free time for kotc lately so I may be a bit out of touch with any recent editor changes)

Xnconvert doesnt preserve transparency

If I recall correctly, for that bit I may have used basic XnView's batch processing (xnconvert is mostly just that but as an externalized program with a fancier UI) instead, as for some reason XnView allows you to define transparency color to be auto-assigned on save (in "read/write -> write tab -> png" settings, which can be accessed from the batch processing window too) whereas XnConvert lacks that option.

By basic XnView I mean the older version, not the MP remake thing (which similarly lacked that option last time I checked).

If you end up using it, remember to deselect the transparency once you're done or it'll apply it to all png saves you do with it.

 

[fax_]

So: add the missing "_F03D04" mystery bit

Fantastic, thank you - that did it. I missed this part of the naming convention (and thanks for pointing out my error using 'D' instead of 'B'). Will also play around with Xnview, but would seem the 8-bit png conversion wasnt my primary issue after all

Spoiler

For other people to play around, please find DSun objects (placeables, characters, creatures) and map assets below as mentioned, covering all 3 games. Still in TIFF format, but can be converted per discussion. Crimson Sands largely repeats the assets first two games, but there are some new items and maps mixed in and I haven't done a rec to clean out everything unique.

https://www.mediafire.com/file/fi1wp38t2ec9gev/DSun_Assets.7z/file

Note

• Maps: The download includes the fully generated DSun maps (spoilers if you haven't played through them). Alternatively (if you want to do it yourself), each region gff file in DSun's game directory can be directly unpacked (with gff-tool as opposed to region-tool) using the javacode i linked to in my previous post, in order to extract images for individual tiles. If you were to do that, you would find the underlying tiles are very small (equivalent of one of the floor tiles in my image above) but as I refuse to play with so many thousand little tile files, I will be making myself some simpler 64x64 tilesets from the full maps, which is what I did for my spoiler pic above.
• Creatures/Characters: These are animated TIFF files. Using them for KOTC sprites requires breaking out the animation frames and renaming, resizing and reformatting per the conventions The Red Knight provides above.

 

[The Red Knight]

https://imgur.com/a/c0NCNIP Lagole recommends portraitai.app for acquiring artsy art to use in modules and hide copyright infringement.

Glasses, helmets and beardy beards have a high risk of failure, and cyberpunk implants will likely turn into hairy patches. Some animals and more abstract things surprisingly are ok as long as the algorithm gives up on searching for human faces. So are monochrome drawings with little to no shading. Non-white skin (black, green, etc.) is likely to turn white/pink/tanned. Best to crop the picture beforehand to contain just the face, though if the face is clearly defined then it will either get auto-cropped or you'll get lucky and get some of the body converted too.

linked: some game portraits + doge + some famous people + some other stuff + du + crispy + scrooge + 55yo scrooge ( Lagole Gon apparently you can make people older by photoshopping red/purple aviators on them)

 

[Dorateen]

Finally advanced the party to 5th level, enabling me to run through some tougher encounters. It is an important threshold, with the increased hit points and more abilities equipping the characters to do some effective killing.

Spoiler

And of course, Fireball. Especially when a wizard has the spell shaping feat allowing to cast the AoE and not damage party members.

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One round later, and the aroma of roasted spider in the air:

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Today I will begin working on the class-specific Guild Adventures. This is the last stage of the Hearkenwold campaign, and the content I was working on last year right up to the release of Knights of the Chalice 2. I will write in more detail about the guild quests next time.

 

[Dorateen]

The concept of Guild Adventures is something I had wanted to integrate from the beginning of the Hearkenwold campaign. The idea being individual party members would have missions designed specifically around their class. In the IceBlink engine, we had six core D&D type classes. However with Knights of the Chalice 2 that number expands, if I've counted correctly, to 22 classes! So what I am going to do is consolidate similar themed classes under the umbrella of the appropriate guild. For example, the organization for clerics will now be available for bishops and psychic healers as well. Another guild opens for paladins and champions. The largest collection appears to be the other martial orientated classes, such as samurais, gladiators, warriors and so on, and they will be able to join the Fighter's Guild. I'm still not sure what to do about the Mage Knight, probably let them join both the Fighter and Wizard's guild.

Once the party gains access to the guild hall, they still must find a sponsor for the respective orders, which are six NPCs that can be encountered in the game world. It is by providing the name of the sponsor through keyboard input, which allows entry into the guild itself.

Spoiler

Another feature of the guilds is a ranking system that follows the structure of the AD&D titles given to the different levels of a class. Here, a fifth level cleric learns he is called a Prefect.

Spoiler

Finally, there is of course an assignment given to the characters who petition a guild for membership. These adventures vary in complexity, but the journey can be quite dangerous.

Hook Horrors in the forest are a tough challenge. I was tempted to cast fireball on the first turn, but thought it would be more prudent to use Haste on the party.

Spoiler

Over the next several weeks, I am going to stagger work between the six guild adventures, so that they will all be nearing completion at the same time. And then we will see how much I have underestimated the time needed to recreate this content. I still think I can have it all finished by the end of March.

 

[Dorateen]

I've written of the Guild Adventures more extensively in the Hearkenwold IceBlink thread, so I don't want to cover that ground again. Suffice to say, last week I was able to get most of the Cleric guild stuff done and this week I started on the Paladin guild. The plan is to switch to the Ranger guild quest beginning next week. Speaking of which, are Storm Warriors considered a build related to druids? If so, I'm going to lump them in with that guild for ranger and druid characters accordingly.

In the meantime, there has been a return to Asherim and a continuation of that adventure arc.

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Discovering secrets in secret places.

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Completely unrelated, but elsewhere in the campaign, this was a fun fight against three hags and their pets. It would have gone better if everyone in the party except me didn't get stunned the first round.

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[AdolfSatan]

Well, Storm Warriors get their spell list from the Druid's, so it seems fitting to lump them under the same guild.
Will you be using kotc2's sound fx and music? You reckon they can be modded out if not?

 

[Dorateen]

Will you be using kotc2's sound fx and music? You reckon they can be modded out if not?

I am working with the sound and music included with kotc. The sound files are .wav format, those would be easy to swap out. But the music tracks are .ogg files. If you can convert to that format, then should be able to add your own music.

 

[The Red Knight]

You reckon they can be modded out if not?

Stuff you put into sounds/music folders will appear as an option in the editor for relevant script commands (it's a drop-down list listing contents of the relevant folder). As Dorateen said, it also requires using specific filetypes.

The dozen or so ambient sounds that appear as tools in the editor to place on map and get louder with proximity (e.g. approaching a fountain or a crowd of people) are hardcoded to use specific files in the main folder's sounds folder (you'd have to replace those if you wanted different ones; I haven't tried to see if you can override them by placing some identically-named file in your module for a less destructive surgery).