KickStarter Knights of the Chalice 2 Thread - Augury of Chaos

[NJClaw]

Hm, did some reading on the official site.

It seems a int 20 human wizard with cat familiar can replace elven one for searching for hidden doors and compartments. Thats huge, due to 2 extra feats on lvl 1. Will check this evening ingame

Ok just checked this, its TRUE! Works for both cat and owl familiars

Isn't an human wizard with an Intelligence-boosting item enough?

Where can you get +2 int item earliest?

Early chapter 2 for sure. You are going to miss all the checks in chapter 1, but is a magic short sword really that necessary?

 

[felipepepe]

How's the modding going?

I got 4 days off, started to make a serious Lv 1-3 module, trying to mimic the wilderness areas of Baldur's Gate.

Hope more people is also trying to make modules. I got the full map making pack from Forgotten Adventures, wouldn't mind helping some custom backgrounds on photoshop if anyone has a finished module in need of art.

 

[Iluvcheezcake]

Hm, did some reading on the official site.

It seems a int 20 human wizard with cat familiar can replace elven one for searching for hidden doors and compartments. Thats huge, due to 2 extra feats on lvl 1. Will check this evening ingame

Ok just checked this, its TRUE! Works for both cat and owl familiars

Isn't an human wizard with an Intelligence-boosting item enough?

Where can you get +2 int item earliest?

Early chapter 2 for sure. You are going to miss all the checks in chapter 1, but is a magic short sword really that necessary?

Where exactly? Vendor? Drop?

 

[NJClaw]

Hm, did some reading on the official site.

It seems a int 20 human wizard with cat familiar can replace elven one for searching for hidden doors and compartments. Thats huge, due to 2 extra feats on lvl 1. Will check this evening ingame

Ok just checked this, its TRUE! Works for both cat and owl familiars

Isn't an human wizard with an Intelligence-boosting item enough?

Where can you get +2 int item earliest?

Early chapter 2 for sure. You are going to miss all the checks in chapter 1, but is a magic short sword really that necessary?

Where exactly? Vendor? Drop?

Somewhere in the tomb, before the treasure where you find your stolen equipment. I reloaded a save after the mimic fight and I didn't have it, the next save is after the 5 tombs and I have a Circlet of Intellect +2.

 

[Iluvcheezcake]

Aha ok, the tombs then

 

[Thonius]

So..... good artstyle when?

 

[The Red Knight]

So..... good artstyle when?

Official new sprites in 2021.

Modding-wise, felipepepe released a classes art pack earlier, and there's AdolfSatan's token pack.

And you could try my vanilla token replacement (first link + shadows from the second link), though it's a WIP (i.e. I've just replaced all tokens first and only now am going through the game to see if it's ok; so far I need to change a few cultist tokens but monsters and chapter 2 are fine) and not compatible with others' tokens (I prefer squares so if you want circles you'd need to put it through a token maker to batch-crop them and add borders).

And the background maps you can put through some artsy filter yourself to make them look hand-drawny (probably not worth it to get anyone to redraw them as they could instead help module makers and draw something new).

 

[Mortmal]

So..... good artstyle when?

You pick one of the token pack for FG2 or roll 20 , change filename to .zip , steal the pics inside, open gimp or photoshop and reduce size to 64X64, one by one . Unless someone has a better way to automatize this.

 

[AdolfSatan]

Yeah, use a batch resizer online

https://www.iloveimg.com/resize-image/resize-png
https://bulkresizephotos.com/en

 

[Darth Canoli]

So..... good artstyle when?

The answer is: NOW!

The tokens packs released by our fellow codexers are more than enough.
It has already been established the only ugly tokens were the PC ones --> Fixed.

If you can't find them here, felipepe uploaded his token pack to Nexus.

 

[AdolfSatan]

I'm not too fond of the monster tokens either. Perhaps we could do some teamwork to replace them, first we decide a style or source to steal borrow our images from, choose an appropriate border/colour coding if needed, then split the work, and get it done over the course of a week.

Anyone up for it?

 

[Dickie]

True, he should've called it a backer beta, clearly that's what it atis. But at least he's listening to feedback, if KotC2 1.0 came out on Steam, it would be crushed by negative reviews. Now it has a chance of reaching more people, hopefully get a modding scene going.

If he just adds "easy mode" options to the game, I don't think it'll help the reviews much. He needs to modify the module to make it less fucked up. People want to be able to win without choosing easy mode. I remember Vince saying that in Age of Decadence, people complained about hard mode being hard.

 

[Dickie]

I'm not too fond of the monster tokens either. Perhaps we could do some teamwork to replace them, first we decide a style or source to steal borrow our images from, choose an appropriate border/colour coding if needed, then split the work, and get it done over the course of a week.

Anyone up for it?

The problem, as somebody mentioned way earlier in the thread, is that you need to go into the module and change the tokens used by some of the enemies, since the tokens are re-used so much. It's not as simple as just replacing all the tokens.

 

[AdolfSatan]

You're right, but in that case it's just a matter of using the creature editor (found under the Special menu) to change the tokens when they're being called by a char that doesn't really fit them (like a boss using the same as a monster, we could even add some extra tokens for that). It's rather fast to do, and split between several people it wouldn't demand much of an effort.

 

[NJClaw]

Do you get a particular reward if you perfectly solve all 38 math riddles in chapter 3? I'm continuously missing 3 of them and I can't understand which ones.

Here I summon the power of the great KotC 2 autists: Jasede, Tweed, Nryn, Dickie, Noddy

 

[Sacibengala]

Steam when? GOG please?

 

[Darth Canoli]

The green cowards* are no more!
Fought them with the help of the Greys.
What really did the trick was the starting position, though, starting south rather than east was a huge advantage, also having Erz and not splitting the party.
I'm not sure if the party started south because we joined the Greys and they took the eastern spot or because we jumped the chasm without the help of the bird merchant.

I could kill them alone now but the fight is too long and starting east is really painful; too much ground to cover before you can nuke the rangers and shamans, giving them the opportunity to get ready against spells; so it'll have to do.

Also, the Green King is dead, RIP.
The outcome was undecided after we both threw a version of stinking cloud at each other but the psionicist finished the main alley enemies off and then stunned the King and his guard while the druid dominated the frogs (not very helpful but it bought some time).
didn't even try to dominate the Scorpion, i wanted too much to split it into two.

BUG/Question
The game froze three times when i tried to follow the western passage from the Green Goblins King, any tips to circumvent the bug ?

*Funny, when you get through the chasm without talking to the Grey Goblins first, they describe the Greens as cowards using bows while they're berserkers using axes but when you fight with them against the greens, the Greys mostly shoot arrows and use spells ...

 

[flabbyjack]

Steam when? GOG please?

Probably in a year. Game needs some balance, polish, and the rest of the classes.

 

[Jasede]

Do you get a particular reward if you perfectly solve all 38 math riddles in chapter 3? I'm continuously missing 3 of them and I can't understand which ones.

Here I summon the power of the great KotC 2 autists: Jasede, Tweed, Nryn, Dickie, Noddy

You can't solve them all, they are bugged in that they do not answer any answers with a "/" in the string, which happen to be two of the correct answers.
But if you check the scripts, no, there is no special reward.

 

[The Red Knight]

The problem, as somebody mentioned way earlier in the thread, is that you need to go into the module and change the tokens used by some of the enemies, since the tokens are re-used so much. It's not as simple as just replacing all the tokens.

You could also go the route of finding better art that at the same time looks similar enough to faces/poses/etc. of the originals (like the succubus/beautiful woman issue brought up earlier, if it's a pretty face without horns, sharp ears and red skin, then use some picture of a pretty face without horns and other demonic features). A bigger issue is that humanoid tokens are too fucking gender-ambiguous and I accidentally made some cultist brother a woman because his token wasn't masculine enough.

Also keep square 64x64 art pieces of all tokens as FramedIcons subfolder for dialogue pics is pretty much 99% of the token art except it's square/uncut. Almost all filenames are the same, minus the "-1" size suffix, though there are instances of some files getting a prefix or a suffix, the suffix changing (e.g. commander-1 -> human-commander-alt, or "red" in the name changing to "fire"), and in a few instances the icon getting a completely different name from the token. And a few icons are from tokens that have no 64x versions (like spiders) so it's a bit of additional cropping/resizing. And while at token-replacement, you need to replace vanilla player character art as well, as a few creatures use that instead of the main token folder (even though player tokens are duplicated in the main folder).

Another thing I noticed when making my pack is Pierre made a token for a non-elf from an elf one by zooming the art in a bit so the elf ear is not visible, and cut out characters from the KotC1 cover art to make a few more tokens with them. Trying to squeeze every last bit of art he could.

Unless someone has a better way to automatize this.

XnConvert can do quick multi-step batch/folder edits with everything base XnView can - bulk resizing, cropping, color depth changes (for when you're making square tokens and need to make them 32bit for the game to recognize them), etc; I think you can also do color transparency via importing a mask from a file and then doing some other step but I don't remember what it was.

It's not that time-consuming, either way. Finding the right art will likely take you more time than editing it.

_______________

Also someone could try converting Dominions sprites (as tokens). Fairly sure I've seen a complete art rip for modding purposes on either Steam or the fan forums, and there were some D&D-themed nation mods for the previous game versions too. I'll probaly eventually try doing some custom shadows for sprite use (or they could be simply pasted into some token template), but I already wasted enough time on that giant token pack.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

You can't solve them all, they are bugged in that they do not answer any answers with a "/" in the string,

Wow

 

[Dorateen]

Slowly getting used to the tools and scripting conventions. I even have a battle set up that the party can choose to fight or flee, the latter selection will send the characters running across the map.

Here's an introductory screen.

 

[Mortmal]

The problem, as somebody mentioned way earlier in the thread, is that you need to go into the module and change the tokens used by some of the enemies, since the tokens are re-used so much. It's not as simple as just replacing all the tokens.

You could also go the route of finding better art that at the same time looks similar enough to faces/poses/etc. of the originals (like the succubus/beautiful woman issue brought up earlier, if it's a pretty face without horns, sharp ears and red skin, then use some picture of a pretty face without horns and other demonic features). A bigger issue is that humanoid tokens are too fucking gender-ambiguous and I accidentally made some cultist brother a woman because his token wasn't masculine enough.

Also keep square 64x64 art pieces of all tokens as FramedIcons subfolder for dialogue pics is pretty much 99% of the token art except it's square/uncut. Almost all filenames are the same, minus the "-1" size suffix, though there are instances of some files getting a prefix or a suffix, the suffix changing (e.g. commander-1 -> human-commander-alt, or "red" in the name changing to "fire"), and in a few instances the icon getting a completely different name from the token. And a few icons are from tokens that have no 64x versions (like spiders) so it's a bit of additional cropping/resizing. And while at token-replacement, you need to replace vanilla player character art as well, as a few creatures use that instead of the main token folder (even though player tokens are duplicated in the main folder).

Another thing I noticed when making my pack is Pierre made a token for a non-elf from an elf one by zooming the art in a bit so the elf ear is not visible, and cut out characters from the KotC1 cover art to make a few more tokens with them. Trying to squeeze every last bit of art he could.

Unless someone has a better way to automatize this.

XnConvert can do quick multi-step batch/folder edits with everything base XnView can - bulk resizing, cropping, color depth changes (for when you're making square tokens and need to make them 32bit for the game to recognize them), etc; I think you can also do color transparency via importing a mask from a file and then doing some other step but I don't remember what it was.

It's not that time-consuming, either way. Finding the right art will likely take you more time than editing it.

_______________

Also someone could try converting Dominions sprites (as tokens). Fairly sure I've seen a complete art rip for modding purposes on either Steam or the fan forums, and there were some D&D-themed nation mods for the previous game versions too. I'll probaly eventually try doing some custom shadows for sprite use (or they could be simply pasted into some token template), but I already wasted enough time on that giant token pack.

Oh finding the art is easy https://thetrove.net/Resources/Programs/Fantasy Grounds/Tokens/ you will find everything to replace kotC2 token just have to spend time renaming and resizing, as some token are 64X64 some 128X128 .

 

[Darth Canoli]

Slowly getting used to the tools and scripting conventions. I even have a battle set up that the party can choose to fight or flee, the latter selection will send the characters running across the map.

Here's an introductory screen.

Meanwhile, i might have to revert to 1.01 or wait for 1.03 to overcome a bug freezing the game west from the Green Gob King encounter...

 

[Nryn]

Meanwhile, i might have to revert to 1.01 or wait for 1.03 to overcome a bug freezing the game west from the Green Gob King encounter...

The frogs in the Goblin King fight used to cause many problems: neverending combat when they swallow whole someone, unlimited attacks for the person swallowed whole, crashes, etc. Wonder if your Druid's domination of the frogs uncovered an unnoticed bug. I'd suggest reloading an earlier save, skipping combat through the Shift+WIN macro and seeing if the game allows you to proceed. If you have no issues, you might have no choice but to repeat the Goblin King fight, but without messing with the frogs this time.