I was just pondering the requirements for remaking KF3.... the "billboard" trees caught my attention. A billboard is basically a flat graphic that always faces the player. KF3 (aka KFII) uses these to really pad the countryside with trees.

Well in case anyone has ever wanted a "billboard" ...I just realized SOM does indeed have this feature hidden inside of it. And how I know this is there is an item turned object (I think Tom made these by copying all the items into the object folder) which exhibits this billboard quality. It's the golden short sword, and it's probably not the only one of its kind. This used to annoy me because I needed to use it as an object, but when I did so it would always be facing the player billboard style. I suppose I did not realize it at the time, what was an annoyance, was actually pointing to an actual feature.

So I invite anyone to try this in there game. And then try to figure out what about that file seems to make it behave that way.

Btw, if no one wants billboards in their game atm / is in the mood to be the first to isolate this feature, there's a more than better chance I will figure out what's going on when I start documenting the file formats sometime here shortly.


PS: I think the sword object I mentioned only faces the player about the vertical plane. Which is probably a good thing at least in the case of trees which would otherwise appear to lay down when seen from above. I think full on billboards are probably also available, because I'd expect some magic particles to work this way. The flames in lamps may do the same.

EDITED: Is there a chance the x files or whatever you guys use to export models into Som can be exported to act this way? Maybe we already know how to do this??

I'm playing KF2 and I have a couple Verdite at this point and will probably look into selling it for what looks like 4800 each and upgrading my armor... items in KF2 also sell for relatively close to their buy price so it's almost never a bad investment to go ahead and buy the stuff.

At any rate, it seems to me at least early in a game it's way more practical to sell the stuff asap and deck yourself out. You can always just fire off your magic 50x or whatever and get an equivalent magic bonus... thoughts?



Now in KF3 (aka KFII) my brother tells me yesterday that the magic is really F'ed up. And I seem to recall as much, though I think my memories about this had mingled between KF3 and K4 over the years. As I understand it you have a separate stat for each element which a Verdite will give +1 to each, but also have a magic stat which never rises other than using an item (Wisdom Fruit??) to get a +1 bonus. Can anyone confirm / deny this / explain it in detail / the merits? In this scenario, if casting fire 50x raises fire attack, then clearly Verdite is 5x more lucrative to use instead of sell (at least)



Finally I am very aware the gameplay in KF4 was radically pussified for the North American release. I'm curious if you guys have ever been interested in playing the original as it was intended. I'm also curious if any alterations were made to gameplay in the PSOne games. KF4 is also a little unusual in the magic dept. I can't recall specifics, but in the original you find a circlet on the first map (as I recall just in a barrel behind a house) which gives you like +30 magic, which is huge... this circlet remains your primary source of magic throughout the entire game, even though by the end +30 is not as much as it was in the beginning, it's still basically an fill your accessory slot with this item and you are a wizard, otherwise your magic is really not a primary damage factor (and less so later in the game)



The logic anyway seems to be in KF3 and KF4 the player is intended to be a practiced fighter instead of a studied wizard with any natural talent.

I am planning to take a break from Sword of Moonlight Ex for my next feat, and focus on some tools that integrate with the KF Making Tool side of things (ie. so far Ex is a post-build only paradigm, and will stay that way for a while if not forever)

I've decided I'm going to build three stand-alone tools in tandem all basically related, geared toward really cracking open the custom modeling side of Som. One tool will be for models, another for pieces (map tiles), and the last for generating and manipulating the .prf asset instantiation files. I've decided the model tool will be called Somimp in honor of the Assimp project which it will rely upon in order to be able to import as many types of graphics file formats as possible. The map piece tool will be called Somcat (cat in tool names is short for concatenation) and will do basically all that Somimp does for models only for pieces, including piece synthesis as the name implies...

So we have an Imp, and a Cat, I see mascots developing here. So for the third tool I want another such name. I've three candidates thanks to looking thru Wikipedia for animal ideas (I admit Imp is not an animal, so I could probably broaden the search to unreal creatures if necessary) ...I really want help here, I'm not just grandstanding, these will be important tools and I'd like for them to be fun to talk about and work with. Anyway the three animal candidates I have in mind (please provide alternative monster names or whatever if you can think of anything with three letters) ‎  ...A) Ape, B) Ass, C) Asp (all As for some reason)

I think my favorite atm is Ape. Ape also means to mimic (probably the animals name came from this word) and .prf files basically mimic the resources they're pointed to or the .prf file they're copied from, or just general templates in general. Ape does subtract from the witchy gothic theme you get from imp/cats, I might've gone with bat, but a bat is too much like an imp. Although I do want to submit a wider mascot for Som stuff that is an apelike skeleton with a spider shield (a less appreciated hallmark of KF) and the ML Sword... basically as a mascot the skeleton would be a silent jester like character "aping" different KF tropes. Anyway if Somape becomes the name the mascot will be a skeletal ape etc. The name I have for this ape is "spider monkey" btw, named for the spider shield and being a monkey... or a very ape-like skeleton.

The next candidate is Ass. Ie. a donkey. An ass has the benefit of being more gothic than an ape (apes aren't gothic... though skeletons are) ‎  ... the pun is ass is short for asset, which is essentially what a .prf file represents. Asset is an industry term, and appropriate, so I wouldn't write ass off so quick. It does have the downside of being a little juvenile (still a far cry from assimp in possibilities, but you won't have to be aware of the assimp library to use these tools)

Lastly is Asp. An asp is a snake, so it's closest to the witchy/Halloween vibe. Though I dunno if going that far with it is really befitting of KF. It's not an overly vampish / goth series, and neither am I personally (as the principal author) ...Asp I guess being short for aspects, which is basically what the tool itself will be used for, ie. changing the aspects of assets.

Anyway this is what I ‎  plan to work on. And I want to keep it in a set of three at least for this leg of the SOM historical timeline.


Also as for the future. I'm pretty sure it's technically possible to put a Som game on the Xbox. If anyone would like to help me borrow an XNA account or kit on the sly, or would fund an XNA membership for me. I can look into this. I'm pretty sure I can at least make it technically playable on the Xbox. Whether or not we could get permission to make it downloadable on Live might be a different story. I'd think as long as a game felt like quality, and possibly if permission was granted from all parties involved (From' and possibly Agetec etc if your game is literally KF based) there is a chance. I mean I'd think it would be good press for From' and bad press if From' blocked such a thing.


Furthermore, it might be too soon to say, but chances are I'm about to win an auction for a standard definition head mounted display. I decided to pick one of these up for playing the PSOne games while I'm in the midst of reliving my youth. In which case I will probably pick Ex back up long enough to implement stereo vision (3D) ... which should be pretty easy to do, unless DX7 doesn't support it. In which case it may have to wait a little while. This is interesting of itself, but I think Som graphics are a little too hi-resolution for HMD technology. So I'd like to start talking about developing an alternative set of pieces and objects that are lower poly / more abstract, probably beginning with copying the style of KF2... I've also been in talks with Todd about eventually revamping Dark Destiny if we can get support from others... ie. make it a community initiative. Part of this will involve rebuilding the first map of DD to match KF2 as perfectly as possible, which might also present an opportunity to develop a side by side map set that looks just like KF2, which will be made easier with the Somcat tool I will develop, which should make it possible to accomplish many of KF2s overlapping map sections fairly accurately.

PS: By KF2 I mean KF (US) ... which I might as well stick in my signature

He hasnt been on this site since January, nor on the agetec board since last december.

The last update on his personal site was the 14th.

I know he had a few projects close to completion that he had been keeping in touch with me on up to that point but I havent heard a word since the end of january.

I am just curious if anyone has talked to him, I want to be sure he is ok.

I am probably going to snail mail him something this week, to find out if something bad happened over the winter or if hes just burned out being online.

I do like this game but there are times when i think... This is pretty damn weird. I mean, KF was weird make no mistake, but it was "old school" fantasy style weird. I dont really enjoy the strangeness in DS, because there are points when it can heavily distract you from the gameplay.

Some people like this... But dont you feel that it should have stayed with the original style of KF? Something was missing, i felt.

This is just my opinion and i hope others can gauge their opinion based upon their own experiences.

I know Holydiver and Weissvulf have beaten it...has anyone else finished the game?

Is anyone still playing heh.

Does anyone need help?

one month late...but I figured it would be ok since today marks the repair of the trismegistus forum itself.

Tom, there is one topic (the one called cheater!!) that I havent figured out the mystery of why its not showing up yet...but i can work on that more later.

For now, happy birthday tris....one month over due=)

Attached Files

  tris.bmp (Size: 651.77 KB / Downloads: 496)

I'm posting this in the DD board on purpose.... but first I want to say, after playing beta DD I wanted to play KF2 again (before playing DD again) ...now I've played thru KF2 at least two times in my life, once when it was fairly new, and later again when I was either finishing highschool or had some time to kill after having finished, and well now I've officially played thru two sittings (which in my case tends to not be very long) and I'm astounded how quickly the game seems to have unraveled. More or less my first recognizable accomplishment was to find the dragon fountain, and not too many minutes later I'd mustered the courage to start slaying the guards and had in my possession the jail key. Let Alef's comrade out of jail and had in my possession the first dragon figure key (forget what the name was) ...and I had the presence of mind to walk back and save my game to make sure I chose the right spring (something I don't think I ever did before) which makes a huge diff, because in past play thrus, A) I recall not finding the fountain until later in the game, and B) I'm pretty sure both times I ended up unleashing the ailment healing spring first (so no free MP until even further into the game) ...though I think I would've been wise enough not to do that on my second play thru unless I had so ingrained the game into my psyche I'd taken it for granted the status spring would just come first. Anyway it's a real joy... and it's been significantly long enough that I've forgotten nearly everything in detailed terms about the experience, which is something I always see to before revisiting a book/movie/game I have great esteem for.

All that said.... I gotta admit, I really can't place the starting map of DD into the layout of this area in KF2. I'd be shocked if the key locations on the map lineup at all or even orient in the correct directions... I haven't heard much of anything from Todd lately (I'm assuming because we're not keeping the same hours) but I'd really like to see a side by side layout of the KF2 and DD maps for this area dissected. I really like DD and I really like KF2 so much, the rest of DD really hits home, but this map just doesn't fit.... I'd go so far as to get out a sketch pad and totally redo the damned thing for DD if Todd would promise to put it in the official game sooner or later.

To be honest I'd like to see DD's maps poured over and over time refined until they mirror KF2's as perfectly as possible (perhaps paving the way for a KF2 remake) by whoever would pitch into the task. I don't see anything in KF2 that I couldn't model in Som... even if it meant a few more cheesy transitions it would be well worth it to get it right / do justice to the layouts (even if DD was never meant to be a 1 to 1 mirror of KF2 Melanat)


EDITED: Btw, it just blows my mind how awesome an experience you can have for 600yen off the PSN compared to all the liquid gold dipped turds lining the shelves of all the retail outlets... I consider video games my one true love in terms of media, but in reality my media attention span is more divided about 40% music, 30% tv, 20% film, 8% print, 2% games... and that's a shame. But as a medium games have only been around for a short while so the back catalogue is not much, and well let's face it, the golden years are long gone and were short lived. A least I can focus all that latent energy into video game related work (usually far more tangentially so than what I've done for Som already)

https://www.digitalspy.com/gaming/news/a...error.html

There goes my plans to rekindle my KF2 flame (well for now anyway)


I'd just pulled out the headphones and strung out this programmable PS2 controller I'd setup last night just for the purpose


I don't understand where Sony gets off telling me I can't play my game once it's on the harddrive etc. First time I've ever run into DRM logic I reckon


I guess now I all I got to do is think about the more than 400$ I just dropped on a Windows7 Ultimate upgrade, a DVD drive to install it with, and a 1TB networked harddrive... did someone want to buy some of my games

Hello

I know that this is a place to post work and downloads, but i thought i'd add a request!

I'd like to know if anyone has any NPC or Enemy models to use in game, and if theres any way of
obtaining new ones from discs etc, and the method to put them into SoM.

Thanks

Verdite ‎