Unofficial Arcanum Patch (Original Thread)

[Ander Vinz]

-Vincent now has negative alignment

Questionable decision. The guy sacrificed himself to stop the demon after he failed to do it with his powers and yet you give him negative alignment. It is clear when you talk to him that he controls the body at the moment and he even helps you to kill him.

-The Blade of Xerxes which the adventurers fetch for you now now uses correct art.

typo

 

[Drog Black Tooth]

-Vincent now has negative alignment

Questionable decision. The guy sacrificed himself to stop the demon after he failed to do it with his powers and yet you give him negative alignment. It is clear when you talk to him that he controls the body at the moment and he even helps you to kill him.

This is a moot point indeed, but I'd like to draw your attention to other characters in the game. Torian Kel has -20 alignment, although he seems to be such a noble person. That's just because he's been through a lot, he was raised as undead (obviously against his will) to fight against assassins, and then was doomed to wander Arcanum for many years just because of his curse (actually somewhat similar to Vincent's story). Z'an Al'urin has -30 alignment just because she was born and raised as a dark elf, even though she despises their philosophy and acts even more noble. I believe, that character's alignment should indicate not only his/her views but the background as well. Anyway, Vincent DID kill people, out of his own will or not, but he did. I gave him -20 alignment (he had a generic +10 before).

And it's important for gameplay reasons as well. You get penalty if you attack good creatures.

 

[Ander Vinz]

-Vincent now has negative alignment

Questionable decision. The guy sacrificed himself to stop the demon after he failed to do it with his powers and yet you give him negative alignment. It is clear when you talk to him that he controls the body at the moment and he even helps you to kill him.

This is a moot point indeed, but I'd like to draw your attention to other characters in the game. Torian Kel has -20 alignment, although he seems to be such a noble person. That's just because he's been through a lot, he was raised as undead (obviously against his will) to fight against assassins, and then was doomed to wander Arcanum for many years just because of his curse (actually somewhat similar to Vincent's story). Z'an Al'urin has -30 alignment just because she was born and raised as a dark elf, even though she despises their philosophy and acts even more noble. I believe, that character's alignment should indicate not only his/her views but the background as well. Anyway, Vincent DID kill people, out of his own will or not, but he did. I gave him -20 alignment (he had a generic +10 before).

And it's important for gameplay reasons as well. You get penalty if you attack good creatures.

I still can not agree with you. You may be right about Torian Kel but Z'an Al'urin deserves her alignment if only for her egoistic nature. Gameplay reasons are inessential: what do you get for killing demon? +5 alignment? And what do you get for killing Vincet? -1?
Read the book about L'anamelach: not only this elven mage sealed the demon in his body, Vincent keeps fighting him for control over it and even archieved temporal victory by immuring himself in Caladon's catacombs.

 

[Drog Black Tooth]

I still can not agree with you. You may be right about Torian Kel but Z'an Al'urin deserves her alignment if only for her egoistic nature. Gameplay reasons are inessential: what do you get for killing demon? +5 alignment? And what do you get for killing Vincet? -1?
Read the book about L'anamelach: not only this elven mage sealed the demon in his body, Vincent keeps fighting him for control over it and even archieved temporal victory by immuring himself in Caladon's catacombs.

I see your point.

Any other opinions on this matter?

 

[Grump]

I still can not agree with you. You may be right about Torian Kel but Z'an Al'urin deserves her alignment if only for her egoistic nature. Gameplay reasons are inessential: what do you get for killing demon? +5 alignment? And what do you get for killing Vincet? -1?
Read the book about L'anamelach: not only this elven mage sealed the demon in his body, Vincent keeps fighting him for control over it and even archieved temporal victory by immuring himself in Caladon's catacombs.

I see your point.

Any other opinions on this matter?

The problem is that a good aligned party gets pissed off with you if you attack even though you are supposed to...there is a similar problem with the Paladins in the Bagellian Deeps. Lazy scripting means you have to think of creative artificial ways to avoid a penalty. Is there even a point in changing the alignment back? Is there a way in game to see it?


PS Also I think just killing Vincent without releasing the demon gets you a ding to your alignment. Maybe talking to the chief solves it I don't know.

 

[JSG]

Hi
Recently picked up Arcanum again afterseeing the work on the unofficial patch (great stuff BTW). I never really got very far in the game before. But ATM I also am having problems with the the number of random encounters, which is beyond rediculous. Every time I travel I have an an encounter in less than a fraction of a second. Is it a result of the unofficial patch or just a part of the game, and is there a way to reduce it?

 

[Drog Black Tooth]

Hi
Recently picked up Arcanum again afterseeing the work on the unofficial patch (great stuff BTW). I never really got very far in the game before. But ATM I also am having problems with the the number of random encounters, which is beyond rediculous. Every time I travel I have an an encounter in less than a fraction of a second. Is it a result of the unofficial patch or just a part of the game, and is there a way to reduce it?

If somebody prefers 1074 random encounters' system over 1064 one, then they may try this. Create a "Rules" folder inside your "Arcanum\modules\arcanum" folder and put the file there.

 

[JSG]

Sorry, ive tried that
All that seemed to change was that the encounters were all the meloncholy hand, the frequency was still absurd

 

[Drog Black Tooth]

Sorry, ive tried that, (and i didn't really understand what it ment)
All that seemed to change was that the encounters were all the meloncholy hand, the frequency was still absurd

What level is your character? If you get only the molochean hand encounters with 1074 system, I assume you're level 50. But the frequency shouldn't be "beyond ridiculous" with either system. How many random encounters do you get while going, let's say, from Tarant to Ashbury?

 

[JSG]

Honestly, travelling from Tarant to Ashbury would take to long,
From Taarant to about half way to the Forbidden pit (maybe 1/8th of the way to Ashbury?) was 20 Encounters at level 35 using 080502

 

[Drog Black Tooth]

Honestly, travelling from Tarant to Ashbury would take to long,
From Taarant to about half way to the Forbidden pit (maybe 1/8th of the way to Ashbury?) was 20 Encounters at level 35 using 080502

Wow. It seems, for some reason, the game's acting funny. What OS do you use? If you're on Vista, try running the game in compatibility mode. Also, perhaps the game acts this way because of too powerful modern hardware (Fallout had such problems with the world map, and Arcanum is based on its engine). I wonder, if anyone else has encountered such problems.

If nothing helps, as a temporary solution I'd suggest you run the game with the -norandom parameter (add it to your desktop link, e.g. "C:\Sierra\Arcanum\Arcanum.exe -norandom".) It will turn off all random encounters.

 

[JSG]

Im running Windows XP, My hardware isn't very fast, AMD 64 3700+ . I dont have any idea why its happening but thanks for that parameter, ill use it for now.

 

[Ander Vinz]

Im running Windows XP, My hardware isn't very fast, AMD 64 3700+ . I dont have any idea why its happening but thanks for that parameter, ill use it for now.

Using D3DWindower greatly slows the game down. But it's for those who prefer to run Arcanum in a windowed mode.

 

[Faceless]

My PC is a monster by Arcanum's standards, and I am not experiencing any problems with random encounters. Between Shrouded Hills and Dernholm I only encountered four lots of enemies.

 

[Drog Black Tooth]

Speaking of the cut out content, there was one thing that shocked me the most. I think, most of you noticed, that the game actually mirrors sprites of critters and all objects. For example when a critter is facing right it loads the same frame as when it would look left, but mirrored. When I first got the game, I thought that they were just low on space and didn't render those frames. But they actually did... As I looked through all art files, every critter, every object, even goddamn chair has frames for facing all 8 directions. They're just unused. HALF OF THE FRAMES ARE UNUSED. This is so wrong, I almost cried.

Maybe it's connected with crappy optimization of the engine (the game was pretty slow on rigs of its time), but they at least could include the option to switch off sprite mirroring. I wonder, what Leonard Boyarsky has to say about this.

I'm not a programmer, so I asked Tim. Here's his answer for you:

We added sprite mirroring because we were loading too much memory with animation. On machines close to our minimum spec, this would cause the memory cache to fill up and the game would thrash and the frame rate would drop to almost zero.

There is no way to turn off sprite mirroring. I would be surprised if all of the create art had all 8 animations. I thought we dropped the extra animations to save disk space as well. If not, the game could be hacked to add all of the animations back in, but it was never intended to do so. This could have unforeseen consequences.

Tim.

 

[ecliptic]

Cool to know the original devs respond to questions occasionally.

 

[Drog Black Tooth]

There is no way to turn off sprite mirroring. I would be surprised if all of the create art had all 8 animations. I thought we dropped the extra animations to save disk space as well. If not, the game could be hacked to add all of the animations back in, but it was never intended to do so. This could have unforeseen consequences.

It seems, you were asking for it, Mr. Cain.

ATTENTION: THE FOLLOWING SCREENSHOTS ARE *NOT* MOCK UPS.

Yes, I've hacked the engine. Yes, each and every creature has all extra rotations (I've checked the files, all 8 rotations are there, it even seems the format itself won't support less rotations), even for lying on the ground animations and the like. And yes, it all works properly with out slowing down the game (at least it's not noticeable). And finally, if you didn't already figure it out yourself, the game now uses 40% more animations for every creature.

Finally, after all these years...

 

[Grump]

There is no way to turn off sprite mirroring. I would be surprised if all of the create art had all 8 animations. I thought we dropped the extra animations to save disk space as well. If not, the game could be hacked to add all of the animations back in, but it was never intended to do so. This could have unforeseen consequences.

It seems, you were asking for it, Mr. Cain.

ATTENTION: THE FOLLOWING SCREENSHOTS ARE *NOT* MOCK UPS.

Yes, I've hacked the engine. Yes, each and every creature has all extra rotations (I've checked the files, all 8 rotations are there, it even seems the format itself won't support less rotations), even for lying on the ground animations and the like. And yes, it all works properly with out slowing down the game (at least it's not noticeable). And finally, if you didn't already figure it out yourself, the game now uses 40% more animations for every creature.

Finally, after all these years...

*thumbs up*

 

[Xor]

Awesome, just awesome.

 

[Faceless]

Now I can't wait for the next update!

 

[Ratatosk]

Finally, after all these years...

You, honorable Sir, just keep delivering the goods... :roman salute:

It makes me wonder though... what could possibly still emerge from the depths of Arcanum?

 

[Hümmelgümpf]

And what about animations? Are they all there?

 

[Drog Black Tooth]

And what about animations? Are they all there?

If it wasn't clear, these are animations, not just standing sprites. There are extra animations for walking, running, prowling, fighting with all weapons, everything. Now a shield is always in the left hand and a sword is always in the right hand, whatever you do. Each sprite originally had animations for 8 rotations (0-7), but only 5 of them were used in the final version of the game (1, 2, 3 becoming mirrored versions of 7, 6, 5). So, a creature now always looks differently, no matter what direction it's facing. It even seems that the graphics format doesn't allow for less than 8 rotations, so they rendered every creature with all 8 animations, all extra art is in the game. Ridiculous, I know. According to my calculations, it's around 200 mb of unused animations in the final game. And what's more, no matter what Tim Cain says, the impact on performance seems to be minimal, if noticeable at all.

 

[Trash]

Amazing, great work!

And what's more, no matter what Tim Cain says, the impact on performance seems to be minimal, if noticeable at all.

Well, pc's have become a lot more powerfull in recent years. Still, I think they only removed these to have more space for all the localised versions.

PS Then again, they wouldn't have been hidden if they were romoved now were they? Perhaps it just is that pc's back then didn't hack it. Oh well, who knows.

 

[Shambelle]

Sorry to answer only now.
Real life took its toll...

Yes, this is interesting and I might use it if you make a better icon:

There's lots of artefacts as you can see, also a black pixel in the center of the picture is caused by your icon.

In fact, the black pixel is present in all the .art of the target.
I can delete it for the modified Magic-Tech-Penalty.art but in this case, I think that the other .art must be modified as well.
And the rest was not real artefacts but an attempt (perhaps badly executed) to give a grittier fell to the icon...
I can of course give you a cleaner icon (like the red cross) if you want.