I am going to see if we can get some more people back in here to update us on their projects and try to be better at getting this site up to date and finish the tutorial etc and probably start hosting some info about Ex.

I am hoping 2011 will see the completion of Rathmor and Mytrosia, and I thought I may start working on a secret project of my own sometime soon. ‎  I am not 100% sure what it will be yet, but I am feeling rather inspired today by all the good news with Ex and the updates that Verdite has been posting.

SOM games take a long time to make, so dont expect any real worthwhile info about anything im gonna work on for some time as it will be very slow going.

Ben I may be picking your brain for a refresher on custom map making.

Are those another proprietary format? Or something we know how to play

I have an idea... if it worked it would be very nice, but it will take some work so I need proof it will work before trying it.

If it's not obvious, you guys should've worked out by now I've no proficiency at all with the customization tools you all use to make new objects etc. Figuring them out is something I've avoided burdening myself with.

So anyway, what I'd like to know/find out if necessary, is if you take an object like a tree... one we know is guaranteed to disappear when you look away from it. I'd like to know if the size of the tree, in terms of the outermost polygons actually effects the point at which it disappears.... In other words, if you give the tree a larger wingspan (in the model file itself) will it do a better job of staying put.

So, if it is the case that that helps, I can setup Ex to insert some invisible triangles about the objects so to make Som think they are larger than they actually are. Ex can also be optimized so to skip dealing with anything with a pure black (ie. invisible) texture.

This is the only foolproof way I can think of to keep event driven objects tied down without dipping into Som's memory.

So anyway, if you wanna contribute to fixing huge glitches like this, please consider helping out by setting up a proof!!


PS: It's just a hunch, but it seems like scaling up objects in either the parameter editor or map editor or both is somewhat responsible or increases the likelihood of disappearances.

I know I dont post as often as I did a year ago, but I wanted to wish everyone who still visits a happy thanksgiving!

I think we have a lot to be thankful for coming pretty soon as Verdite's project and Holydiver's extension are ramping up to make the SOM experience better than it ever has been.

Maybe we will get lucky and some folks like Madison/Darchangel/Asus etc will return with some progress on their games.

Here (https://www.swordofmoonlight.com/Trismeg...stusEx.zip) is a trial/teaser for Trismegistus with Ex

It's not the official Trismegistus I want to go up for outsiders, but please try it / tell me what you think / if it works for you. Hopefully Todd and I will be able to integrate Ex into everything available on this website etc throughout this month, or next 30 days-ish anyway.

This package incorporates everything I think Som can do for Trismegistus at this time. There's just a few more things I wanna work on before an official release, including trying to get rid of the restart soft-requirement. Basically once you unpack the archive and run the game it will ask you to restart. You can either A) restart or B) until you do restart you'll have to edit the Trismegistus.ini file by hand and if you change your settings in game they won't be remembered.

I remember a day when putting anything new on your Windows OS meant you'd have to restart your computer, but now days you can pretty much run Windows for weeks until it finally crashes and you have to restart. So I do wanna get rid of this requirement one way or another. Personally I won't restart my computer for some program.... I'll as soon wait a month until I happen to restart, so...

It's not really a requirement that Ex work that way, but its the only way to make a game work out of a readonly drive, like a CDROM or a network share -- and also the only way to have a non-ascii .ini file name. The main reason I wanna do better somehow is because it doesn't work if the path to the folder has any non-ascii characters in it. The only prob is afaik the only way to make it work is to somehow replace an interface in an other process. I'm guessing it's possible but its a whole other level compared to the trickery Ex has indulged in so far.

I also wanna clean up some rough spots around the edgess that no one will likely ever see. And there is some trouble with shadows not blending correctly into fog, but I'm pretty sure there are no shadows in Trismegistus. The included SomEx.dll should look virtually identical whether your video card is Shader Model 2.0 or 3.0 (I reckon most of us have 4.0 or 5.0 cards these days, I really don't know) and I plan to add 1.0 (if possible) before done here and hopefully spruce up the other possible targets just in case anyone ever sees them.

The only problem I'm aware of is if you stand in a certain spot near the beginning of the game a phantom tower will pop into view in the distance over the wall, but its a really small spot. That tower is really the only thing in the game (first 6 maps or so anyway) that really dictated the draw distance. Normally (when extending the draw distance) it is visible from the starting point basically, I'd thought I'd gotten rid of it, but I'd noticed it still popped up in one specific spot earlier today. If Tom rebuilt the map with optimization disabled it would probably become a non-issue. The tower would still be there, but the problem is really that it pops in/out so. In fact I think if one map tile was just lowered .5m it might not show up either.

Maybe something could be done about the Status/Compass display options because I'm pretty sure Tom is not using them.

I used the debugger to explore many of the maps but not all. I reckon if you get that far into the game a glitch or two more won't deter you. Plus I don't wanna spoil everything for myself

The main improvements are:
-Smooth windows experience
-No sound dropout
-All around solid graphics (wysiwyg)
-Unlimited lamps / more vibrant lighting
-Further draw distance caps off sky (fog is same)
-Fog saturated stuff blends into the sky
-Cleaned up a handful of graphical eyesores
-A slew of little Ex features/bugfixes
-Probably much better performance
-Fonts come with game

Mainly there is a lot of quality stuff the untrained eye will probably totally miss even with a side by side comparison, but your subconscious will thank you I think.

The game can also be easily translated into other languages (https://www.swordofmoonlight.net/ex/lang/Trismegistus/) and I may look thru the script at some point inserting Unicode in place where it would seem to help (pretty quotes, arrow symbols, etc)

You may need this (https://www.microsoft.com/downloads/deta...laylang=en)

Below is the Ex.ini configuration.

I was just wondering how you guys are able to make new map tiles that mesh with the originals, if you are able...

I know for instance Todd made that patch that fits between the outdoor grass walls, and the ice set in DD that looks very similar but with terraces you can walk on.

So I'm wondering if From' provided a tool for that, or if you just eyeball things, or what??

The first image resolution is the 1024 setting

Second is the 1600 resolution.

Attached Files

Thumbnail(s)
       

As homage to my own work, I'm releasing an album that has orchestral versions from previous Hguols works. ‎  4 tracks from the Epitome album, 4 from Celestial Powers Intervened To True Supremacy and 4 original tracks.

Everyone here will know most of the tracks from Diadem of Maunstraut, Trismegistus or Dark Destiny - I'm not sure if there's another track or not, (Perhaps Zeir Grimholdt) but all these songs are re-recorded with different sonics and instruments. ‎  Affectionately entitled "Maunstraut", while these tracks will be familiar to those of you who've played the games, they do have a little different feel to them being "maxed out" with better equipment and knowledge as a producer.



Hguols - Maunstraut
Track Listing:

To Solace
Epitome of Unprecedented Deaths (Dark Destiny)
Epitome of Threnodies Abided (Hlodyn)
Epitome of Sovereign Toccatas
Epitome of Eternity (Trismegistus)
Destined to Find Sanctuary (The Eternal Story)
I Found the Essence of Darkness (Journey to Despair)
Within the Grip of Insanity (A Cryptic Welcome)
In This Exchange of Demise (Forsaken, Forever)
Hordes of the Undead (Rain)
Hordes of the Undead (Silence)
Zeir Grimholdt

The songs in bold can be heard on Hguols.com. ‎  (If you'd want to hear the difference) ‎ 
Digital release on iTunes, Amazon, etc. December 1st, Limited pressed CD available first quarter 2011.

My offer to everyone here (since I mentioned it in the subject). ‎ 

Anyone who has been on this board before November 16th, 2010 - I'll give you a free digital release of the entire album. ‎  It will come with all 12 tracks, 192kbs MP3s, and a 300dpi JPG of the album cover.

Just respond to this thread clearly stating that you'd like the Maunstraut album. ‎ 
I'll PM you the link to download it.

Everyone, thanks for your dedication, time and contributions to this community!

Thanks!

Tom

I know I've been gone for a long time and I was wondering what I've missed. Also, how has everyone been doing?

Ive recently set up my new pc and it has windows 7 premium, and wont install SoM... When i go to copy files to c:\..\kf
it says access denied. Anyone else got this problem?