Incline Hearkenwold - an IceBlink and DC engine Campaign

[Kliwer]

I have not much time to test it properly, sadly. It seems that "the arrow bug" is connected with loading game. The so-so solution is to un-equip any missiles before saving/loading game.

I wish this game have more testers becouse it is very good. It's similar to Gold Box titles but, in my opinion, better. There are more interactions and dialogues, battles are not so repetiv, interface is not so clunky... trully good job. I like its P&P and classical D&D athmosfere.

Some things to consider.
-Are You sure that damage from spells is not too low? I was striked by 3-4 fireballs in one turn (without any fire resistant) and it was... not very scarry. My wizard with his Icestorm is pathetic in comparison to fighter with magic sword, double-attack and cleave.
-The same thing goes to sneak attack - it is quite hard to perform it, but damege is not very impressing.My dwarf-fighter could deal about 8-18x2 damage + cleave (5 level), my halfing-thief hardly exceeds 20 with his sneak attack. In my opinion sneak attack (or "backstabbing") should be hard to perform but final effect should be massive.

Do not take those comments too literally. Encounters design is good, they are challenging but not insane. It will be easy to screw up this ballance with too radical changes.

-It will be nice to add some journal entries to side-quests. Even very short - just to not forget about any mission. I like old-style paper notes so it is not big problem to me.

 

[Dorateen]

Fireball has a Reflex saving throw for half damage. High dexterity characters could see reduced damaged if they are making their saves. Sneak attack damage will go up as a thief gains more level. The possible advantage is the high attack bonus, which could be helpful against enemies later who have a better armor class.

I agree, the fighter is a powerhouse. They will be your biggest single-target damage dealers. Wizards tend to soften up multiple enemies with area of effect spells, allowing your fighters to finish them off.

I do want to give the combat mechanics a closer look. Most of my focus has been on adding content. All fo this information is very helpful.

 

[Dorateen]

I uploaded a new version of Hearkenwold, the IceBlink engine now up to build 173. It can be downloaded here:

Hearkenwold

This should fix the bug when equipped ammunition might vanish upon loading a saved game. Thank you Kliwer for spotting this. I appreciate the feedback that helps me focus more on technical things.

The standard operating procedures apply: if anyone is in the middle of playing, they can copy their saves folder into the saves folder of this new version.

 

[Dorateen]

Testing some new content in Hearkenwold.

 

[Dorateen]

A little Helloween reference for Halloween.

I am planning to post an updated version for Hearkenwold this weekend, which will include the completed cleric guild quest. This is just a preview of the type of charming character the party can meet.

 

[Dorateen]

I have a new version of Hearkenwold available, now using build 174 of the IceBlink engine. The file can be downloaded here:

Hearkenwold

The primary feature being the inclusion of the first of the class specific guild quests. Over the past few months, I have mentioned this concept and in fact had been planning to integrate into the campaign since the beginning. So I am happy to have this one done. Rather than a singular objective, the guild quest for clerics is more like a mini-adventure. As an advocate for the inherent party-based nature of role-playing games, I believe a team of adventurers is comprised of individual player characters, not followers. The purpose for content like this, then, is to spotlight a party member and give them their own moment to shine.

Since this is the first of these quests appearing, I'd like to share some of what's involved, and the benefits of engaging with the guild. When the mission is completed, and the character presents himself before the guild master, they will be acknowledged as a member of the Order. This will result in assigning that character a trait, which grants two attribute increases.

Furthermore, the designation will be scribed into the party journal, marking those of the class as members of the guild.

Finally, a few weeks ago in another thread, I had talked about one of the neat things about classes, is the ability to assign level ranks to a character. This was found as part of AD&D, and latter Wizardry as well, to give a couple of examples. The significance of such a convention of titles, is that in the context of the gameworld, a character would not be referred to as a 7th- level fighter, but called a Champion. In Hearkenwold, I have used these level ranks as part of the guild system. A character can solicit the guild master, to learn their class title accordingly. Here, a 6th-level cleric is called a Canon.

The guild content is not something immediately available to new players, but must be unlocked as I described in previous updates. The idea (hopefully) is that all of this will emerge in a natural progression over the course of an adventure: meeting the different guild sponsors, completing tasks to reveal where the guild is located, and then taking on the quest itself in order to achieve membership.

Players who have a game in progress from an earlier version can copy their saves folder into the IBBeta174 folder.

Next up, I will work on the guild quest for Rangers.

 

[Dorateen]

I made good progress last month on the Ranger class quest. So I have a bunch of new screens to share. Starting with introduction of the Guild Master, when the party meets him, they will learn some additional background about the organization.

Like the cleric Guild Master, this guy will also tell rangers what title they have earned corresponding to class level.

As I described in the previous post, these guild quests are set up rather like mini-adventures. And I think the one for rangers is even more involved. It will require travel to an entirely new location: the Serion Forest. This area spans multiple maps, with one section characterized by sakura trees (cherry blossoms).

Of course, new locations usually means new enemies to fight. There are a number of creatures who will be making an appearance for the first time. One battle includes a fight with griffins!

There is quite a bit of history behind this part of the Hearkenwold campaign, and I will refrain from dumping lore at this point. However, suffice to say, the elves of this forest have withdrawn from the rest of the world for more then five centuries. So what happens when a dwarf has audience with the elven King and Queen for the first time in over five hundred years?

This adventure being critical for rangers specifically, it would only be appropriate to give such characters their moment to shine. Here, we have a display of wilderness survival skills.

Finally, on a scripting note, there are many places in Hearkenwold where a passage of time is implied. When an earlier update to the Iceblink engine introduced the world time display on the map, there was also associated scripts including the means to advance the clock. I have not gotten around to adding this until now. Therefore, in the next version of the game, resting will generally advance the world time by 8 hours. Events that require travel can see a day or more pass in terms of hours. While there are no limitations on the adventure, as this is designed under the principle of open exploration, it will be interesting to see the effect on accelerating the calendar, for example if a player rests or backtracks a lot.

I should have the ranger guild quest finished or nearly finished by the end of the month. When I post that updated version of the campaign, I will reveal the next class content that I plan to work on in the new year.

 

[Dorateen]

Just for fun, I was going through some old material and found a map I drafted on graph paper when I first started writing the fiction that serves as the backdrop for the Hearkenwold campaign. A little bit a trivia, the reason why the calendar year this adventure starts in is recorded as 1295, is because I began working on the story in December of 1995. Over the years, there would be another iteration of the map, more detailed and with some name changes, which I can't seem to locate at the moment. Anyway, the intention of this PC hobby project is to eventually re-imagine this map in the gameworld.

Spoiler

Some interesting notes. "The Lands of Brunwor" is what would ultimately become Hearkenwold for the purposes of the campaign. I adopted the name when I was reading a Nentir Vale supplement back in 2012, and the name resonated with me. Although I changed it to the preferred archaic spelling, of course. I did retain the name Brunwor as belonging to the founding lineage of Kings of Astaria. The "Cerine Forest" would be changed to Serion, as described in the previous update.

A few locations on the map that are already represented in the game include the city of Khyn, Fortress Relmfur, Skardale, and the Halls of Hamhock.

The desert land of Asherim, which is an optional area the players can find themselves in, would be placed somewhere in the southeast of the map.

I am almost done with the Ranger guild quest line, so should have the new version available to download by the New Year.

 

[Morkar Left]

God damn I really have to get to play this. The last couple of years are like the golden times are back regarding all the available rpgs. With less time on my own I probably only can catch up at my retirement (several decades still I guess...).

 

[Dorateen]

I have a new version of the Hearkenwold campaign available to download. This uses build 176 of the IceBlink Engine, and can be found here:

Hearkenwold

The main feature is the inclusion of the Ranger guild adventure. If a party is persistent and can gain access to the Sphere of Guilds, and if they can find a sponsor for the Order of the Lost Guardians, then they might be sent on a secret mission. Rangers who complete the quest will be awarded membership into the guild, along with a trait that raises two attributes.

Here are a couple of more screenshots that suggest the Serion Forest could be beautiful and deadly in equal measure.

I also made a small balance tweak, adjusting some enemies who appeared to not do enough melee damage.

Now that two of the class specific content are finished, I'm a third of the way there. Next up will be the Thief Guild quest. For this, I decided to present the mission as a treasure hunt and dungeon crawl. I will go into more detail in the next update, but I am using a NWN2 module that I made but never released. It was in a pretty advanced stage, and it is fun rebuilding it in the IceBlink toolset. I already have two maps of the first level constructed.

As before, the new version of Hearkenwold is compatible with existing saves.

 

[eXalted]

Best thread in the Workshop.

 

[Dorateen]

The dungeon that will be featured as part of the upcoming Thief Guild adventure is nearly complete. I am presently working on the last level. The reason I was able to get a lot done over the past few weeks, is because this content is using a module I made some time ago. Maps, encounters, conversations and items are all finished so it was just a matter of rebuilding everything in the IceBlink toolset. For some development background, this module was intended to be part of a NWN2 community project back in 2011. One of those overland map concepts, populated with contributions from various authors. Unfortunately, the group project fell apart, and the submission I had ready to go was never released. Which was too bad, since it was a pretty decent dungeon crawl.

As I was working through and refreshing this adventure, it struck me in some ways of having the feel of an asylum the inmates are trying to overrun. All the more reason it seems to me a good choice as the centerpiece for thief characters looking to get a promotion. There are NPCs and factions with their own agenda, and they don't give a damn about the party's objective.

Another important aspect for Hearkenwold is I am not gating this dungeon behind the guild quest itself. It will be possible for a player to discover this location on their own and complete the exploration without having a thief in the party or even receiving the guild's mission. This means in theory it is possible to achieve the goal first, and then if the guild later requests you to go there, such a character will be able to essentially say, been there and done that. Somehow that also seems appropriate to me as something a sneaky thief would do.

On the other hand, this is fairly higher level stuff. I've been running a test party of 5th and 6th level characters, and some battles are pretty difficult. It should be a good challenge, and is probably better suited for a level 7 or 8 party. Therefore, it is conceivable that characters could stumble upon this place too soon and end up running for their lives.

Inserting the dungeon into the gameworld means opening up a new wilderness map. In the screenshot below, the little white ripples on the water tile are actually animated waves. This helps give a more scenic look to the area, I think.

I like this NPC banter with a wizard party member who had expressed hesitation about going further.

This level includes crossing a wooden bridge over a deep chasm, and a subterranean waterfall. Much atmosphere.

Throughout the Hearkenwold campaign, there are placed encounters that can sometimes be avoided through dialogue options. And of course, many are completely optional to begin with. Personally, I don't like skipping out on a fight if given a choice. But in the spirit of this being intended as a mission for the Thief Guild, there are some encounters that a thief character might be able to get the party past without triggering combat. In addition, this area also makes more use of skill checks, probably since I was transferring from something designed for 3.5 D&D and skill checks are part of that.

However, if your shifty rogue doesn't chose to slip by certain monsters, then you get to engage with lovely critters such as these below. Here, I want to point out, that we recently made an update to the IceBlink engine. Now when you mouse over any creature, or player character, it brings up temporary stat block on the left side of the screen. Thus, you can learn everything you want to know about deep fire beetles, or see what status effects are active. Huzzah for transparency.

So now I've only got the last few encounters to finish, and tying everything together. I expect with the progress I made so far, it will be another couple of weeks. Then I should have the latest version of the campaign to release, including this adventure, before the end of February.

 

[Ninjerk]

Will there be realistic waterfall sound effects?

 

[Dorateen]

Will there be realistic waterfall sound effects?

Unfortunately, not at this time. The only sounds are the ambient music tracks selected for each map, clicks and battle noises. Most of this is 2D abstract design.

 

[Dorateen]

Still no waterfall sound fx, but thanks to slowdive we now have a new waterfall prop with animated cascade.

 

[Dorateen]

A new version of the Hearkenwold campaign is available for download, the file can be found here:

Hearkenwold

The focus of the content is a new dungeon location that has been added to an outdoor map that now opens in the gameworld. It is accessible for all parties, but should be of special interest to thief characters. Especially if they seek membership into the guild of Midnight Shadows.

This is the portrait I decided to use for the head of the thief guild. I wonder if her appearance will be problematic.

Like the other class quests, by completing her mission, appropriate party members will receive a trait that boosts two stats. Their membership into the guild will be scribed into the journal accordingly.

This version of the campaign uses build 184 of the IceBlink engine. There have been some changes to the engine. I already talked about the stat block that can be pulled up by mouse-hovering over any PC or creature in combat. However there are a couple of other features I could not demonstrate in a still screenshot. So here is a sample gif file. Enemy creatures now have a little idle animation between turns. Also, enemy creatures now move across the battle map more smoothly.

A new trait has been added for characters to consider on level up. Battle Regeneration will grant 1 hp back at the start of every round, to those who have this trait. There are a few powerful items in the game that currently grant hp regeneration, and this effect stacks.

Now with the thief guild adventure finished, I am halfway through the class related material. Next up is going to be the paladin guild quest, which I have started on. I expect to work into the spring on this one. In the next update, I will go into more detail.

 

[slowdive]

Side note: since Karl has been hard at work on constantly improving IceBlink Engine for PC, I’ve been working on building an iOS and Android version using Xamarin. So all the code is exactly the same except for the drawing functions (SharpDX -> skiaSharp) and the file handling code. So now you can play Hearkenwold on your PC and on the go. Just move save files back and forth (until I get a cloud save option in there). We are calling it IBx, the “x” being for Xamarin. We often refer to IceBlink now as IB/IBx because they are the exact same code base. It is still in early beta so give us some more time to get all the kinks worked out. Here are a couple of screenshots from my old iPad and iPhoneX:

 

[Dorateen]

Looks great, slowdive Thanks for the update!

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

I managed to get this to work on my tablet and pc. I hadn't realized it was still being updated.

 

[Dorateen]

Yes, the engine is still being improved and I am continuing to add content to the module. I'll share some new information this weekend.

 

[Dorateen]

Right now I am in the middle of working on the paladin guild adventure. I actually started on this before the release of the latest version of Hearkenwold and so far, it is coming together pretty well. This is probably a good place to mention again the purpose for the class specific content being inserted into the campaign. In order to advance the next stage of the background adventure, the party will eventually need to gain audience with the King. Only prestigious people will be allowed in the advisors chamber, thus at least one character will need to have obtained membership in a guild. Of course, there is nothing stopping a player from completing class quests for all members of his party before moving on to the main conflict of the game.

With that said, here is the Guildmaster for the order of paladins, known as the Holy Zephyrs. I liked the idea of a nondescript, unostentatious person filling this position, in contrast to the conventional image of a knight in shining armor gallivanting across the battlefield.

As for the mission itself, for some time, I have had in mind the idea of sending a crusader into the desert. I have also been intending to return to the Asherim content, which was only partially introduced into Hearkenwold a couple of years ago. So it made sense for me to tie the resolution of that adventure arc with the paladin guild quest. Also, the entire Asherim story arc truly begins when the captain of the city guard in Khyn tells any paladin in the party about a smuggling operation. So again, it makes sense to wrap it all up by having such a character be the vehicle to further this content.

In returning to the Asherim areas, I swapped out a new tile of golden sands and rocks. Theses tiles are meant to be elevated like dunes rising as walls of the desert canyon.

North of the canyon a new map opens up, the Hills of Asherim. This is still barren wasteland, and just as uninviting.

Finally, I wanted to share a unique encounter that demonstrates the IceBlink engine's ability to handle non-party NPCs who can temporarily join a battle. Here, four characters the party has met previously will enter combat as indicated in the log. They are the group of four appearing at the top of the map. These NPCs are then controllable by the player once added.

I am not certain that I will finish the entire Asherim adventure and the paladin questline this month. There are multiple new maps and locations of interest still to be created. More likely the next version will be available in April.

 

[InD_ImaginE]

Might not be the place to ask this but besides Hearkenwold is there any full module made for Iceblink?

The engine seems very interesting but I can't seems to see other full modules like this one.

 

[Dorateen]

Some other modules can be found here:

The Elderin Stone

Raventhal

The Exile

Curse of the Wailing Death Prelude

The Red Carnival

These modules were made with various versions of the IceBlink engine, they should still be compatible with the most current build.

 

[slowdive]

I would say that none of them is as large as Hearkenwold is. The Elderin Stone is larger than advertised. It can take as many as 10 hours depending on your play style (you should play Raventhal then Blackwinter first for story reasons). If by "full" module you mean a completed story with a defined ending, The Raventhal, Blackwinter, The Elderin Stone, Red Carnival, and The Exile are all complete. IBbasic (IB doesn't have this function as of yet) allows you to transfer your party from one module to another if the modules use the IBbasic standard campaign rules.

 

[Dorateen]

Still working on the paladin class quest. I have the last dungeon level to finish, and building up to the confrontation with the primary antagonists of this adventure. There is also a conversation with an important NPC that I need to construct. Overall, wrapping up the details is always the most difficult part. I anticipate it will take me the rest of April to conclude everything. With that said, here's a few new screenshots.

The adventure through Asherim crosses over multiple areas. Below, we have the party emerging onto the Fields of Night: a dark, desolate place of ancient battleground.

Wonder what new monsters might possibly lurk here... ah, Death Dogs! A creature that goes back to the AD&D Fiend Folio resource book. Beware their poisonous bite.

And one more sneak peek, a barrow that the characters can enter. Perhaps all is not what it seems. Then again, maybe its exactly what you'd expect in a land ravaged by monsters and mayhem.

If I can accomplish everything I plan for this month, there should be a new release of Hearkenwold in a few weeks. This of course includes returning to the guild master so Paladins in the party can receive their just rewards.