Arcanum Arcanum Multiverse Edition

[HeatEXTEND]

yay

 

[Poseidon]

Awesomesauce!

 

[hell bovine]

There are 4 types of barbarian armor in the game, dark grey (Dread Armor), grey (White Barbarian Clothes, gold (Bronze Barbarian Clothes) and red (Red Barbarian Clothes). Problem is, there was no difference in look between the small and mid size versions, bronze was always small while the other 3 types were always big. I've retouched the sprites to match all 8 versions.

What do you think?

The yellow one should look lovely on the orc character I'm planning. :D (Do they actually show the colors in-game? I don't rememeber anymore.)

 

[Jinn]

So this might have been stated earlier in the thread and I missed it, but this new work Drog is putting in will be added to the Multiverse mod right?

 

[Poseidon]

So this might have been stated earlier in the thread and I missed it, but this new work Drog is putting in will be added to the Multiverse mod right?

Yes and no. The official statement was "The best of UAP will be integrated in Multiverse", however, apart from that it's not clear whether Drog is directly involved with Multiverse. My guess would be, no. If you look at the first post in the thread it goes something like "Drog joins us" and then it's struck through. Maybe they didn't have the same thing in mind, I don't know. More clarification from either Drog or Macbeth is welcome I guess

 

[Major_Blackhart]

I wish they had a mechanic in this game to target specific body parts, so that shooting with things like the Elephant Gun would easily cripple enemies in the legs. Would make combat a bit more interesting if that could be done.
Probably can't though.

 

[Sordid MCA/Prosper Hybryd]

I wish they had a mechanic in this game to target specific body parts, so that shooting with things like the Elephant Gun would easily cripple enemies in the legs. Would make combat a bit more interesting if that could be done.
Probably can't though.

http://arcanum.wikia.com/wiki/Called_shots

 

[Major_Blackhart]

Yeah, but I don't really recall that playing a role in combat at all.

 

[thesheeep]

I also just learned about that targeting feature a year ago or so It was probably well hidden in those things people call "manuals".

 

[Clockwork Knight]

It's on the combat section of the manual (not much help since the thing has like 200 pages and apparently no index), and in the quick keys list at the end. It's even more obscure in a BR keyboard since the presence of the ç key messes with that location and the keys aren't next to each other. Also the description of the effects and protection against them is pretty vague.

The player may also choose to perform a "Called Shot", deliberately aiming for the head, arms or legs of his intended victim. Called Shots are more difficult to perform than ordinary attacks, as they are less opportunistic, and thus a certain penalty is incurred. Any Called Shot which does connect with the target, however, has a greater chance of being a critical success, and when such critical blows are delivered the Game makes use of a special table to calculate damage, this damage based upon the location of the wound. Called Shots to the head have a greater chance of knocking the opponent unconscious, while Called Shots to the arms and legs have a better chance of causing crippled limbs. Armor worn in those areas will help protect against these blows, which is why it is always a good idea to wear helmets, gauntlets and boots.

<,> -- Attacks will be called shots to the Head (<Comma>)

<.> -- Attacks will be called shots to the Arms (<Period>)

</ >-- Attacks will be called shots to the Legs (<Forward Slash>)

 

[Drog Black Tooth]

Another status update for the high resolution patch. Main menu backgrounds are in!

Spent like half a day coding this, but it was worth it. The backgrounds can be as large as at least 4K Ultra HD, and the game will crop them for your resolution on its own, no need to prepatch anything!

Below is the fade-to-black background (currently lifted from the Russian version, just for posterity), I'm also planning to do a couple more, like maybe a wooden or metallic one, or maybe based on some of the official wallpapers.

In other news, I decided that black nothingness in pick/create character and options menus was a bit too much and replaced it with dirt tiles, which suprsigingly fit quite well with the wood texture. Any thoughts?

P.S. If anybody wants to help with the background images, please do. I'm currently using 3840x2460 images, where Arcanum's original 800x600 background goes right in the center.

 

[FeelTheRads]

I like how the main menu looks with the faded to black edges.
Not the dirt tiles, though... just feels like a cheap texture.

I don't know what to suggest besides just leaving it black, though. Except custom graphics of course, but depends how "true" you want to stay in this regard. But even custom graphics would look weird with the panels separated like that. They'd just look like what they'd be: filler.

If the panels were stuck together in the center of the screen (and for this there's nothing to force it the top like during the game) then maybe some decent custom background could be made. Maybe I'll give it a try if you're OK with it.
Oh, and the top bar is not needed in character creation, right? In that case that could be removed too in my suggestion.

 

[Drog Black Tooth]

FeelTheRads, actually those dirt tiles aren't a texture, they're the actual dirt tiles. You can see the special map (the so called "ShopMap") where your character is being generated and can buy items. In the initial release I just painted that map black, and now I'm thinking that maybe dirt tiles are a better fit.

I also tried another thing today, turns out I can completely hide this map in the code, I can set draw area height to 0 when those menus are active and then change it back. But since those menus are broken in half, the black nothingness looks kinda weird.

Or we could paint that map so that it looks like an actual menu background, lol.

 

[FeelTheRads]

Yeah, I got it that they're the tiles from the game, just saying that because of the repetition they look cheap used as a background texture.

 

[Drog Black Tooth]

Eh, kinda reminds me of that texture Quake used to add when you lowered the in-game resolution.

Anyway, there will be a black background option regardless.

 

[Drog Black Tooth]

A few more possible background options:

 

[Drog Black Tooth]

Not really happy with these tho'.

Anybody wanna help with the shoppin'?? The original mage/dwarf BMPs can be found here. They're 1280x1024, just up the res a bit to get to the 1080p. And here's the main menu background PNG.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

It's on the combat section of the manual (not much help since the thing has like 200 pages and apparently no index), and in the quick keys list at the end. It's even more obscure in a BR keyboard since the presence of the ç key messes with that location and the keys aren't next to each other. Also the description of the effects and protection against them is pretty vague.

The player may also choose to perform a "Called Shot", deliberately aiming for the head, arms or legs of his intended victim. Called Shots are more difficult to perform than ordinary attacks, as they are less opportunistic, and thus a certain penalty is incurred. Any Called Shot which does connect with the target, however, has a greater chance of being a critical success, and when such critical blows are delivered the Game makes use of a special table to calculate damage, this damage based upon the location of the wound. Called Shots to the head have a greater chance of knocking the opponent unconscious, while Called Shots to the arms and legs have a better chance of causing crippled limbs. Armor worn in those areas will help protect against these blows, which is why it is always a good idea to wear helmets, gauntlets and boots.

<,> -- Attacks will be called shots to the Head (<Comma>)

<.> -- Attacks will be called shots to the Arms (<Period>)

</ >-- Attacks will be called shots to the Legs (<Forward Slash>)

I read about them in the manual way back when. However I thought they had gotten removed in a later patch. Also, I never noticed the enemy using them, even on hard difficulty.

What I've wanted is for them to come into play, and have a real impact on game play in terms of status affects you get, enemy attacking you, and even what you and your followers can do in combat.

 

[Nevill]

A few more possible background options:

Can the wooden background be the background for character creation?

 

[hell bovine]

Or we could paint that map so that it looks like an actual menu background, lol.

What about using a high resolution screen of Tarant or some other in-game places?

 

[HeatEXTEND]

A few more possible background options:

cool

 

[Cosmo]

A few more possible background options:

Yeah that's the best one IMHO.

 

[McPlusle]

ETA on when the UI updates will be public?

 

[Drog Black Tooth]

When I'm completely happy with it.

I'm also planning to go thru the whole high res patch code and rewrite all the dubious parts, like e.g. there's one that writes 200+ bytes of code while also altering several calls, what the fuck was I thinking back in 2009.... You should always inject new code with jumps, fucking always. This is a golden rule.

Basically, I want this new version to be definitive and mostly final.

 

[Drog Black Tooth]

Anyway, been playing with several ideas on how to cover up the game area (dirt tiles above) in the pick/create character and options screens. So far, I can do the following:

-- disable redraw, this basically stops the game window from updating, and it will just show the last frame rendered, e.g. once you quit the game and go the menus yeah it's black, because the game area's been purged. but on the game load it's just the splash screen, since it's drawn in the actual game window, so scratch this I guess? unless I can purge the game area on menu transitions (this would be lit af)

- disable the draw area altogether. yeah, this gives me the true black background, but since absolutely nothing is being rendered there's a mouse cursor trailing effect (like if you noclip out of a map in Quake) once you hover the cursor over the black area, last resort I guess?

Is there a ddraw function to fill the screen with black? I guess I could do this and then disable iso_redraw. Or I could look into the game load/area transition functions and see how it purges the screen.

Before somebody says it, no we can't add a background to these menus, since they share their code with the in-game menus. Fucking stupid decision on Tim Cain the Homo Bear's part.