kingsal

Yeah thats terribly hard to see I wanted it to be hidden but that's just too well hidden.

@ObsttorteHey can you confirm that if I have my own version of tdm_weapon_blackjack.def in my pk4 that this system will not work? If so I need go an nuke that file out of all my pk4s. Thanks.

I was going to say I think their crouch pose might be moving the invisible KO volume too high. I can have a look at this. @chakkmanI agree the blackjacking in TDM can be fickle. Do you have the latest 2.11 updates with the new assisted black jack system? I've been using it since 2.11 and personally, I love it. EDIT: Alright so... I think because cauldron was made before that system- there might be some funkiness going on here because I have a modified version of the blackjack. @chakkman If its not too much trouble, can you try unpacking cauldron_v2_2.pk4. Be sure to "Extract here" so it puts all the files right where the pk4 is. Go to cauldron_v2_2/def/tdm_weapon_blackjack.def and delete that file. See if this helps.

Hello thieves, the other day I realized my last Volta release was in 2017! Time really flies. After years of fiddling with this project, I'm ready to announce the remaining missions in the Volta and the Stone Campaign: Volta 1 : The Stone* Volta 2 : Cauldron* Volta 3 : Gemcutter Volta 4 : The Lost Forge Volta 5 : Buried Streets Volta 6 : Traitor * I have redux versions of Volta 1 and 2 in the works. More on those later. I'm going to start beta testing Gemcutter and The Lost Forge this summer, so those will be ready this year. Buried Streets and Traitor are coming along, but won't go into beta until sometime in 2024. WIP screenshots! Seeya around- Kingsal

Oh that's fun! thanks for posting this @Wellingtoncrab. Can't believe its been 20 years

Congrats guys! I'm excited to check this one out.

Will update my blackjacks when I get a chance- might not be for a while though. I used custom blackjacks for a while but have since removed them from my pk4s.

Once again, its not about where you can bring Bellero its about being able to haul him up vine walls. I need players to be able to carry bodies up vines and ropes OR that mission will stay broken for a while until I can fix it. Thats the short of it really.

@Daft MugiAlso just to be clear. Not being able to carry bodies up ropes and vines (ladders) will break the mission design Being able to mantle shorter walls and obstacles in cauldron would actually be a benefit to the design there

Thanks Yeah that should be fine! I think you could make the shoulder mantle even higher honestly. Since the current frustration from players would be that they have to put the body down on the red ledge, climb up, and pick it back up again. I don;t see why we can't go at least to player height. Hard to tell how high that is from the screenshot though. Anything overhead the player would be a no go still. Testing will tell if this makes sense or not

@STiFUJust a heads up if we do change the rope climbing rules it will break Cauldron until I can fix it. This would require redesigning a good chunk of the mission and I don't plan on doing that any time soon.

As for my own opinion on mantling with a body. Im for it. However, I worry that this could have the opposite effect and break some missions where the author anticipated the player not being able to mantle with a body. Risky waters changing mantle rules, but.. im not against the effort. I could see allowing waist high mantles with a body, but not full on overhead grabs and mantles.

Yes! It is mandatory that the player be able to climb those vines with a body although it is not mandatory to mantle with it. I would suggest we don't change that rule as it could effect this mission, PD3 and who knows how many others

@AluminumHasteYeah I suspected this might be the case. I never trusted those force entities. I remember seeing them behave differently with uncapped FPS on but I totally forgot I used them in cauldron.

Hmm you definitely used to be able to swim up that. Maybe something has changed with the function force volumes. I'll have a look, thanks.

Yeah SEED is kind of a strange beast. In some situations its tanked my FPS as well. There's definitely no competing with modern engines here, there are other options: animated UVs, switching to static mesh LODs at long distance (I might try this), but all of them have pros and cons. I'll keep messing around with them and see if I can get them more performant and still looking decent.

Yeah, I did my best there. I can send you the 3dsmax file and you can try out some different orientations of the cards. I suspect making them too dense is going to get very very noisy with alpha tested cards.

This awesome to see thanks for putting this together @Goldwell! This was our biggest year since 2014 with lots of incredible releases and newcomer authors!

Ah right, yeah I see so maybe an additional layer of smaller ground cover grasses. I want to be careful adding too many alpha cards but maybe we can afford a few more up close. Thanks!

Thanks for the notes! Yeah that might be a bug actually. So you are standing in the middle of a patch and cards are disappearing? That shouldnt happen. Would you be able to show an example of this?

I should also mention that I do love that old demo, not trying to knock it. But its pretty tough to make animated grass conform to the terrain like that without using a 3D tool like blender, max, maya, ect. Im also curious if these will work with our SEED system? SEED might only work with static meshes

The old grass demo is irrelevant here. I've completey remade these from the ground up so they are usable by authors. The old demo is one giant custom mesh specific to that demo. Anyways- ill post a video this weekend but as Dragofer mentioned we're really looking for authors to try them out and collect feedback about how usable they are.

Hmm not sure whats up with that. Will have a look, thanks!

Restricting saves in Hazard was a way to test a new tool in the authors toolbox. That's kinda it honestly. Save rooms seemed to line up well with the theme, so I decided to try it. I didn't love the idea of eating up my EXPERT difficulty to test save restrictions, but it was the only solution that worked at the time. Looking back I might have done it this way: - Normal - Expert - Master (exactly like Expert but with save restrictions) Balancing and testing three difficulties is a huge pain to be honest. So having only 2 difficulties + a save restricted one might work well with maybe more save gears Anyways- I would be down to see more experimenting with save restrictions, but authors might want to plan for a good deal of testing. Any bugs or unintended deaths are brutal for the player in that situation

I haven't had a chance to update the mission. I will do as soon as I can.