Unofficial Arcanum Patch (Original Thread)

[Spillmill]

Hi, a few things that I have found don't seem right:

1. Female dressed in Barbarian codes gets lots of interesting responses, however, one was "Error! Missing line 17022 in mes/gd_cls_f2f.mes". I think I was talking to Mrs Garringsburg in Tarant at the time - it was one of her greetings. I was able to cycle through all her other greetings and they seemed ok and this response was repeatable.

2. Asking some characters about Black Mountain Clan the response is something like "Dwarves? Egads! Terrible business men" it should be "businessmen" I like the response so would be happy to see it fixed.

3. Richard Leeks at Stillwater had his sword and shield in his bag rather than on his body, is this normal? (Nice shield though )

4. Conversation with Gildor Nightwalk (maybe at stillwater?)... he says "become", i think it should be "became". Sorry, not much detail on that one.

 

[wrhunter]

I told Prince Auguste Farad that Princess Aria was dead, and gave him the amulet. Then when I met King Prateor, I could just gain the mission, but tell him nothing.

 

[Drog Black Tooth]

-Any chance of the can't-use-waypoints-while-wearing-the-chapeau bug being fixed?

I'm not exactly sure what do you mean.

-The campfires of the gypsies in Shrouded Hills and Tarant (haven't tested the others yet) do damage and can destroy your armor if you stand too close, yet there is no fire animation. Could flames be added? (like at the blacksmith's).

The flames appear at night. And the campfires shouldn't do you any damage at day, since the fire scenery gets turned off. You must be mistaken.

1. Female dressed in Barbarian codes gets lots of interesting responses, however, one was "Error! Missing line 17022 in mes/gd_cls_f2f.mes". I think I was talking to Mrs Garringsburg in Tarant at the time - it was one of her greetings. I was able to cycle through all her other greetings and they seemed ok and this response was repeatable.

Turns out the responses were incorrectly numbered, thanks, it's a pretty obscure bug.

3. Richard Leeks at Stillwater had his sword and shield in his bag rather than on his body, is this normal? (Nice shield though )

Characters using unique blacksmith art can wield only hammers and no shield, they don't have animations for other weapons/shield combinations.

 

[gothemasticator]

-Any chance of the can't-use-waypoints-while-wearing-the-chapeau bug being fixed?

I'm not exactly sure what do you mean.

-The campfires of the gypsies in Shrouded Hills and Tarant (haven't tested the others yet) do damage and can destroy your armor if you stand too close, yet there is no fire animation. Could flames be added? (like at the blacksmith's).

The flames appear at night. And the campfires shouldn't do you any damage at day, since the fire scenery gets turned off. You must be mistaken.

1) When you are wearing the Chapeau of Magnetic Inversion, your character will not follow the path set by waypoints on the town maps. More specifically, pc will not move at all when you push the red button if you have placed more than one waypoint. If you place one and only one waypoint, the pc will move.

2) I am not mistaken about the gypsy fire. During the day, when no flame animation is visible, if I stand very close to the fire, my armor gets broken. Perhaps it is true that my person is not damaged, but the armor damage is a repeatable phenomenon.

3) You know how turn-based combat sometimes hangs? On this runthrough I notice that the only times it hangs is during combat involving doors. The bank in SH, the haunted castle in Ashbury, some of the warehouse fights in Tarant... Maybe the engine has a bug in how it handles doors being opened and closed during combat. A clue?

thanks,
gothemasticator

 

[Drog Black Tooth]

1) When you are wearing the Chapeau of Magnetic Inversion, your character will not follow the path set by waypoints on the town maps. More specifically, pc will not move at all when you push the red button if you have placed more than one waypoint. If you place one and only one waypoint, the pc will move.

I'm afraid that doesn't make much sense. And just to be sure, I put a chapeau on my character and he followed any number of waypoints without any problems. There may be another factor affecting pathfinding, so please upload your save for me to look at.

2) I am not mistaken about the gypsy fire. During the day, when no flame animation is visible, if I stand very close to the fire, my armor gets broken. Perhaps it is true that my person is not damaged, but the armor damage is a repeatable phenomenon.

Hmm, yes, I tried it again, and it does happen, although it's pretty hard to trigger this on those specific campfires, since they're placed on blocked tiles. But yes, nocturnal fire scenery seems to be doing fire damage at day as well. I'll add this to my list of engine bugs.

3) You know how turn-based combat sometimes hangs? On this runthrough I notice that the only times it hangs is during combat involving doors. The bank in SH, the haunted castle in Ashbury, some of the warehouse fights in Tarant... Maybe the engine has a bug in how it handles doors being opened and closed during combat. A clue?

Thank you, I was looking for the cause of this bug. I'll see what can be done.

 

[gothemasticator]

1) Where should I upload a savegame to? Is there a way on this forum I am not finding or should I just use an upload site (and which one)?

2) In Ashbury, when you ask for rumors, one of them states that there is a castle "east of Ashbury." This rumor does not show up in your book, but the castle shows up on the world map, obviously west of Ashbury.

thanks,

gothemasticator

 

[Drog Black Tooth]

1) Where should I upload a savegame to? Is there a way on this forum I am not finding or should I just use an upload site (and which one)?

Just upload it anywhere you please. Like here.

2) In Ashbury, when you ask for rumors, one of them states that there is a castle "east of Ashbury." This rumor does not show up in your book, but the castle shows up on the world map, obviously west of Ashbury.

The Ashbury castle is to the east of the town. It's not on the worldmap, since you can just walk up to it.

 

[Azira]

1) When you are wearing the Chapeau of Magnetic Inversion, your character will not follow the path set by waypoints on the town maps. More specifically, pc will not move at all when you push the red button if you have placed more than one waypoint. If you place one and only one waypoint, the pc will move.

I'm afraid that doesn't make much sense. And just to be sure, I put a chapeau on my character and he followed any number of waypoints without any problems. There may be another factor affecting pathfinding, so please upload your save for me to look at.

I've seen the same problem with maintained spells, such as Agility of Fire. If I have one or more of these ticking on my main character, it'll refuse to follow waypoints. If I dispel the maintained spells, it'll work just fine as intended.
So that's been my solution so far, but if it's a bug that's fixable, that'd be great. I've got a savegame of it here.

 

[gothemasticator]

Drog,

Here are the save files regarding the chapeau behavior. I tested it just before saving and it is still bugging out for me. See what you make of it.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=MXHB6B4S
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=Z40HP82X
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=XL2BG8ZK
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=40D981JB

As to the castle east of Ashbury - the rumor says something about treasure or riches untold, and as a result the castle where you find the derian-ka guy shows up on the worldmap, with a description mentioning the same riches untold. So, I've never thought this rumor referred to the haunted castle. The haunted castle has a seperate rumor which does show up in your rumor book. Remember, the one I'm talking about doesn't show up in the rumor book.

thanks,

gothemasticator

 

[Drog Black Tooth]

I've seen the same problem with maintained spells, such as Agility of Fire. If I have one or more of these ticking on my main character, it'll refuse to follow waypoints. If I dispel the maintained spells, it'll work just fine as intended.

Wasn't able to reproduce such behavior.

Here are the save files regarding the chapeau behavior. I tested it just before saving and it is still bugging out for me. See what you make of it.

I tried the save and your character followed any number of waypoints while wearing the chapeau just fine. However, he did refuse to go a few times. But such things happen because of the poor pathfinding algorithm, not because of the chapeau, spells or other completely unrelated things. Pathfinding is quite primitive in Arcanum, e.g. critters don't cut corners well, so try making a more simple path. Complex paths with a lot of cutting corners often don't work.

As to the castle east of Ashbury - the rumor says something about treasure or riches untold, and as a result the castle where you find the derian-ka guy shows up on the worldmap, with a description mentioning the same riches untold. So, I've never thought this rumor referred to the haunted castle. The haunted castle has a seperate rumor which does show up in your rumor book. Remember, the one I'm talking about doesn't show up in the rumor book.

Ah, so you meant the Ancient Temple. Yes, the rumor is wrong indeed. They just reused the line from the Tarant thieves' dialog, and the temple is obviously east of Tarant.

 

[gothemasticator]

I tried the save and your character followed any number of waypoints while wearing the chapeau just fine. However, he did refuse to go a few times. But such things happen because of the poor pathfinding algorithm, not because of the chapeau, spells or other completely unrelated things. Pathfinding is quite primitive in Arcanum, e.g. critters don't cut corners well, so try making a more simple path. Complex paths with a lot of cutting corners often don't work.

Thanks for testing it. I'll just keep fooling around and see if I can figure it out. I guess I had just made up my mind that it was the fault of the chapeau and haven't been watching for other factors.

 

[zhab]

This important thing you announced earlier is driving me nuts Drog! You get together all of the developers to finally make the long anticipated sequel? You discover the full source code to Van Buren buried in some junk code of Arcanum? Whatever it is I believe we have all learned not to question your judgment in these matters. I guess what I really should be asking, mouth-frothing and all, is what sort of release schedule are you looking at now?

I vote to wait one full year if it merits as much importance as you let on - give us all enough time for a few play-throughs to wallow in the splendor that you have made Arcanum.

 

[Drog Black Tooth]

After a slightly long wait a new version of the Unofficial Arcanum Patch is released. The list of changes is pretty big, and it includes a plenty of restored content in addition to the fixes. All changes are listed here.

The new version follows a slightly different format. Almost everything is now included in a single installer. Apart from the core patch, optional components are available, the most important of them being the Extra Content module (which is mostly based on the Extra Pack).

The new installer is compatible with older versions, so if you have the UAP (with the Extra Pack or not) installed, it will detect it and upgrade without problems. However, the 1024x768 patch has been discontinued and must be uninstalled.

And I'm proud to reveal that the very important thing that we were waiting for is the lossless version of the Arcanum soundtrack. By a stroke of luck, one of the few promotional CDs that were distributed in Europe for free was found.

The soundtrack was never released commercially, and all we had were the mp3 (128 kbps) version that Sierra made available for free download and the in-game version, which had the same quality. But since the mp3 files were available for free download, one would assume that distributing the uncompressed tracks is also legal, but alas Sierra never released them.

A few weeks ago I found a person (who preferred to stay anonymous) that had a promotional CD and was willing to share the original tracks with everyone. And now the Arcanum soundtrack is here, in all its glory!

The soundtrack has also been converted for the in-game use. While you can download the MP3 version (320 kbps), it's also possible to use the original wave tracks in the game with the help of a small patch.

I'd like to thank Mr. Houge for his magnificent and moving music. Only thanks to this fine gentleman we can enjoy such a unique work. He poured a great deal of love and attention into his music and it's greatly appreciated. I encourage everyone to read his notes and comments on the soundtrack.

And most importantly, if you're interested in Arcanum and its soundtrack please consider purchasing a CD if the soundtrack ever gets a commercial release.

As always, the first post has been updated with the download links.

 

[Spillmill]

Oh, this is a wonderful Christmas present! The music was the first thing I thought of when coming back to the game this month after I read about Drog's patch.

As usual, thank you, Drog. And a Happy New Year to all! YAY!

 

[Whispering Darkness]

Well done, and thanks to those who helped this become a reality. :D

 

[Qwinn]

*cheers!*

Great job Drog, and congrats!

This'll be the first game I play once I get some free time again And yes, it'll definitely be with the high quality soundtrack, nice find there.

Qwinn

 

[Trash]

Drog is the living proof that all QA departments should have their own asper/autist. Great job Drog!! :salute!

 

[MaskedMan]

Wow, very nice!

 

[Lain_13]

Great! Thank you Drog.

 

[Earth Nuggets]

Oh whoa, so the game opens in a window without an annoying application? Awesome!

 

[POOPERSCOOPER]

Why I'm I not credited for the patch? The only reason it was released in the state it is in is because I told drogg to suck a cock when he was making drama and halting development. This gave him a reality check and he continued to work on the patch so people can enjoy it. I should be considered a co-contributor on the same level of drogg.


Pooperscooper

 

[emperorworm]

nice work drog, ill play arcanum again for sure. thanks!

 

[Jaesun]

Awesome work Drog, I like your upcoming new patch format. Great idea. A shame the 1024x768 patch has to be removed. I'll assume it is breaking things?

 

[Pliskin]

Whenever I try and "use" (read, consume --- whatever) the Charged Axe schematic, it just makes my game CTD.

OTOH, the schematic for Shreck's Multi-Barelled Pistol works just fine. (Though, considering it's a hand-gatling, it does remarkably weak damage --- less than the Hand Cannon it's an upgrade from --- and isn't worth the effort, IMHO).

Also, if you answer the naked halfling wizard's final riddle incorrectly, as you know, he summons his minions and tries to kill you. Yet, your minions all react as tho you attacked the halfling --- resulting in the usual whining and reaction drop. Shouldn't they consider the agressor as, ya know, the Bad Guy?

Grenades are now supposed to cost 4AP in turn-based? In my current game (UAP081229), they still cost 0.

 

[Drog Black Tooth]

Whenever I try and "use" (read, consume --- whatever) the Charged Axe schematic, it just makes my game CTD.

Grenades are now supposed to cost 4AP in turn-based? In my current game (UAP081229), they still cost 0.

Your installation must be corrupted. Please reinstall the game and patches. And remember, you can't use any mods that weren't made for this specific version of the game.