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Author Topic: LCM - Twinklestar - under construction  (Read 7598 times)

SQman

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LCM - Twinklestar - under construction
« on: May 17, 2019, 03:50:48 pm »

I've decided there's no point posting in the Dungeonevened thread anymore, since all news relate to the sequel anyway; that's why I've made this thread - to finally close that book and start seriously preparing for the next chapter, the elven saga of Twinklestar.

Unlike the last time, I can actually call myself a competent raw reader, even a novice raw modder. I can actually bugfix instead of just brute-forcing my way through the errorlog hoping I don't bean things up even further. More than that, I have a clear-ish vision of what I want to achieve:
-16 main civilizations divided into 4 factions + kobolds and cavern races. Playable races should be human-like. Let's take Squamous's Fantastic Races - as neat as they are, they are just not relatable to us, humans. Not to mention situations where our lads are allied with horriffic monsters exclusively.
-Consistent technology level across civilizations - no more revolvers vs. atlatls; mostly flintlock guns. Deep drows still use crossbows, wood elves use bows, T'lethians use zrbite-powered sonic-blasta rifles.
-Better interaction between mods. Direforged's light hall can produce a luminous scourge of fangs, MottledPetrel's shroomery makes Rhenaya's Drow-style lances usable by elves and dwarves, the spellcrafts' meat summoning summons abrian meat (abrians are outsiders, so that fits the theme).
-More mods, less undefined nail material.


WHERE ARE WE NOW?

Doing stuff from the lists below.

DWAR... ELFING

Not yet. I have an idea who I want to take at embark, but until I get to see genders and attributes nothing is final.

Ess (me) - 'The Metamagician' - alchemist/teacher/record keeper/manager
?? - 'The Assistant' - alchemist/animal trainer/grower
?? - 'The Cook' - cook/butcher
?? - 'The Adventurer' - spearman/fighter/dodger/liar
?? - 'The Collector' - appraiser/gem cutter/gem setter
?? - 'The Coal Miner' - miner/furnace operator
?? - 'The Stray' - biter/climber

I'll be using more 'lore friendly', elven-sounding names derived from usernames if someone doesn't suggests one on their own.



At a certain time the halls of the Academy of Magics would become deserted without fail, but the first day of spring was always different - late evening, after most students and staff have gone home already, deans of all faculties would meet to discuss the goals for the coming year, plan important events, settle differences and more. They were not, however, the only ones in the building.

Ess, a lowly metamagics professors was sitting in the staff room buried under a pile of ungraded papers on the metamagics of summoning circles. The elf prefered to spend the night reading page after page of nonsensical magical heresies in the light of a single fire snake in a jar than lugging this heap of paper home, even though both options were horrible.
"Seneri, he's been on a roll lately..." She muttered to herself, looking at another paper. "Yeah, cram more sigils into a string, maybe you'll brute-force the circle to work. Yeah, nah, failed. Litheme, my favorite. Let's see how long until everything falls apart... 'Chi'? We're elves, we say 'mana', for gods' sake! I wish I could lower your grade for this... You can easily destabilize ambient magical field with a circle complex enough, that's not up for discussion! No, I specifically told you not to use that book as a source! Failed. How about Anaye? Oh, that's not a typical schematic... Another idiot forgot the first rule of summoning circles - a circle must be drawn on a flat surface! If you did any research, Anaye, you'd definitely and without fail come upon Tirist's summoning sphere thought experiment, and you would know why it was JUST a thought experiment!"

"Someone's still here?" Another elf's voice came from beyond the wall of papers, most likely from around the door. The elf who disturbed Ess's work glanced at the desk for any clue who he was talking to, and only saw a pair of ears twitching wildly. "Oh, it's you, Ess-diri!"

"I know the drill - lock up after I'm done... Although I get a feeling I'll be sitting here until morning." The metamagician mumbled, not even raising her head from over a particularly bad work.

"No, that's not it. The rector, Thene-ithera, would like someone from metamagics faculty to be at the big meeting. You know Thadayi-ithera couldn't make it, and since you're here..."

"They should be almost done by now anyway. Unless..." Ess suddenly realized why someone of her specialization might have been needed. "They were supposed to discuss the expedition! Thanks for reminding me!" The woman grabbed the fire snake jar, and stormed past the confused news-bearer, then through the dark corridor towards the conference hall.

---

The discussion among the deans was heated to say the least. Those who wanted to lead the expedition were quickly being dismissed as unsuitable for the job, and those who would be of any use had no intention of going.

"Yes, I admit arcane ecology would be best studied in a region with strong magical ambience, but is it really what we are after?" The dean of arcane biology faculty argued. "It would be a tremendous waste of resources to send this kind of expedition to a mission that could be fulfilled by a single traveller with basic knowledge and a notebook. Maybe the nature of that region is related to a curse or a secret? What do you think, Rise-diri?"
The head of secrets and curses faculty smiled in an extremely dismissive way and said unusually calmly: "How about I clear your mind with my Phlegmatic Focus? Maybe then you'd realize how stupid what you've just said was. What if the state of that place is not in fact an effect of a curse? Wouldn't that be a waste?"
"Well, I could..." Someone else began, but was immediately silenced:
"History of magic is not magical knowledge, shut up, Nela-diri!"

Before things got out of hand, rector Thene decided to intervene by redirecting everyone's attention to a visitor who was standing in the doorway, up to that moment completely unnoticed by the quarrelling crowd of elven sages.
"Ah, here is Thadayi-diri's replacement!" Thene announced. "Ess-diri, I believe? Pease take a seat, you may be the key to solving a serious issue we have encountered."

"Uhh... Thank you, Thene-ithera?" Ess wasn't sure if she should have felt flattered that she was considered important, insulted that she was being treated like an object, or if she should have been looking for sinister undertones. Either way, she took the empty seat and listened.

"As you have probably heard, our academy is sending an expedition to a highly magical area, a so called 'good region'. The goal is to gain deeper understanding of magical processes that cause places like that to be what they are, the reason why the ambience is strong strong and unstable, how the flow of mana differs from mundane areas. As you see, most questions are of metamagical nature. So, what would you say?" The rector wasted no time; he needed that twitchy-eared woman to agree, not only because she had all prequisites to lead research on good regions, but also because it would prevent an all-for-all brawl during the deans' meeting to break loose.

Ess's ears stopped twitching for a while. It certainly was a way to take a break from reading about summoning spheres, crossing strings of sigils, negative mana and all other evidence that her students were completely hopeless. From what she's heard, the expedition was well funded, meaning that it would be well prepared and possibly quite comfortable.
"That's a great honor, Thene-ithera. I will gladly lead the expedition, but if you don't mind me asking..."

"That's great! Fantastic, even!" Thene exclaimed, barely hiding nervousness. "All forms to fill are on Thadayi-diri's desk in his office, so is the letter from centurion Fira-ithera and all the instructions. Fill the paperwork as soon as possible; you'll have the whole day tomorrow to gather people, tools and resources. The Academy will provide basics like food and... well, food. Meeting disbanded!"

The rector and the deans all stood up in an instant and practically ran out of the room before Ess could even decide which of the many questions lingering in her head to ask first. She too picked up her fire snake jar and left the room. With ears twitching and hands shaking with frustration, Ess headed to the metamagics faculty's dean's office to spend the rest of the night over a heap of paper after all.



The embark will be anything good, because plot. There should be plenty of !FUN! stuff in those places with all the mods.


It will be quite some time before we start for real. Maybe this will be enough motivation to get me back to work? I hope so, because I have this writing itch right now.

Enemy post

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Re: LCM - Twinklestar - under construction
« Reply #1 on: May 19, 2019, 10:55:00 pm »

I'm often quiet about these things, but I'm looking forward to watching the new game.
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Imic

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Re: LCM - Twinklestar - under construction
« Reply #2 on: May 20, 2019, 01:34:52 am »

PTW
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SQman

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Re: LCM - Twinklestar - under construction
« Reply #3 on: May 22, 2019, 12:55:09 pm »

I've been going through the creature raws assigning [CREATURE_CLASS:GOOD] and [CREATURE_CLASS:EVIL] to creatures lately. Lands of Duality strikes again, making me wonder if it's really worth it for a single interaction used by just a single creature. I may also want to give the shisa Turn Undead, which would require me to also add [CREATURE_CLASS:UNDEAD] to a lot of stuff. Fun times ahead. I'll have to do a Hito fort in an evil region after this.

On a brighter note, I've assigned relevant reaction classes to all gems for Forgotten Realms Direforged's magic smelter. It will now be possible to create bars of +4 steel using a Red Stone of Aja in order to turn elves into unkillable ultimate life forms. Well, that would be hard, but if we don't get access to any exotic supermetals, we'll be able to make +1 iron equipment from iron and onyxes.

Another thing: removing civilized creatures, entities and languages will slim the modpack down quite a bit, maybe make it load quicker. I'm really excited about this, even if it goes against the initial plan I had for LCM.

SQman

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Re: LCM - Twinklestar - under construction
« Reply #4 on: May 26, 2019, 01:09:59 pm »

Lists? Lists. Just so both you and me can keep track of what's done and what's not. Also a motivation for me to get to work.

Done
Unfinished
Not started

ENTITIES
Spoiler: High Men (click to show/hide)
Spoiler: High Elves (click to show/hide)
Spoiler: Mountain Dwarves (click to show/hide)
Spoiler: Halflings (click to show/hide)
Spoiler: Higlanders (click to show/hide)
Spoiler: Wood Elves (click to show/hide)
Spoiler: Hill Dwarves (click to show/hide)
Spoiler: Drows (click to show/hide)
Spoiler: Hito (click to show/hide)
Spoiler: Orcs (click to show/hide)
Spoiler: Deep Drows (click to show/hide)
Spoiler: Anthousai (click to show/hide)
Spoiler: Goblins (click to show/hide)
Spoiler: Skeletons (click to show/hide)
Spoiler: T'lethians (click to show/hide)
Spoiler: Brigands (click to show/hide)

CREATURES:
Spoiler: Highlander pets (click to show/hide)
Spoiler: Drow pets (click to show/hide)
Spoiler: Halfling pets (click to show/hide)
Spoiler: Hito pets (click to show/hide)
Spoiler: Orcish pets (click to show/hide)
Spoiler: T'lethians and pets (click to show/hide)
Spoiler: Anthousai (click to show/hide)


As you can see, there's a lot to be done, and the work isn't going quickly. I do want to start playing, but I've been in a bad mood to do anything remotely productive lately. I will get to it though! I even broke my Rimworld modlist so I don't get distracted with that. Yeah, that was completely intentional, ha ha...

Asin

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Re: LCM - Twinklestar - under construction
« Reply #5 on: July 27, 2019, 01:26:39 pm »

How's progress?

SQman

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Re: LCM - Twinklestar - under construction
« Reply #6 on: July 27, 2019, 02:57:16 pm »

I should have said it earlier, but the progress has stopped a while ago. It's hard to work on entities (which I hate doing) between work that exhausts me mentally and five-hour depression naps. Besides, I'd like to have at least large animals done for ADP before starting playing anyway, and in ADP I'm currently rewriting descriptions for animal people and giant animals which is also hard, because there is only so much you can write about a duiker man, and there are like six of those.

On a brighter note, while making T'lethians I've discovered that creating creatures from scratch is fun and satisfying, so I may start working on T'lethian pets and Anthousai soon.

Oh, and I'm not making halflings and orcs playable, screw that. It would mean making two more sets of glass/gem/metalwood/luminous reactions, and there is so much to do with Hito already.

Lunardog15

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Re: LCM - Twinklestar - under construction
« Reply #7 on: August 23, 2019, 07:49:11 am »

Just wanted to say that i'm alive so, hi there.
Hope you feel better
It's fine if you want to Elf me but if you don't that's fine too
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SQman

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Re: LCM - Twinklestar - under construction
« Reply #8 on: August 23, 2019, 01:24:04 pm »

I'll be taking elfing requests once I know what kind of elves we'll have. All I know for sure is that my elf and The Stray should be female, the other can go either way, though I'd prefer if The Assistant was male and The Cook was female. Not entirely up to me though.

I actually started working on the modpack lately, starting with making extra material reactions for Hito weapons. Also I've decided that orcs will use any extinct creatures, be it from Scourge's mod, Enemy Post's Primal, Goblin Cookie's Forgotten Realms Direforged or my Animal Diversification Project. That means we'll be able to see orcish warriors arrive on anything from terror birds and quaggas to T. rexes and Paraceratherium.

I'm also seriously thinking about scrapping brigands as a civ. The obvious problem that arises is what kind of creatures would ally themselves with demon-worshipping goblins, sentient skeletons and aquatic aliens. I may go back to Fortress Defense frog demons for that.

Lunardog15

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Re: LCM - Twinklestar - under construction
« Reply #9 on: August 23, 2019, 02:12:50 pm »

alright, I can wait for you to be ready
also it would be funny to see an orc show up riding a dodo
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Darkening Kaos

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Re: LCM - Twinklestar - under construction
« Reply #10 on: August 23, 2019, 09:50:53 pm »

alright, I can wait for you to be ready
also it would be funny to see an orc show up riding a giant dodo

     FTFY
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So! Failed to make peace, war looms, kill the infidels... what are our plans for the weekend?
The Giant Moles in the caverns of my current fort breed like crazy, even while regularly being decimated by other beasts entering them...