Think the set would become immediately damn unpopular

Hi all just a quick post to say the Vecna mod is back with release of V16, hopefully all the bugs are now squashed, and i am actively supporting the mod ( expansions are comming and am here to squash future bugs )

Thanks

Jube

Good point mate, in a "proper" BW setup there is more than enough xps available to get to around 18-30th lv and launch off into plane travel ( the hunt for the eye and hand being the first of several extraplanar adventures ). And if a character/party has the skill power and balls to complete hand/eye quest and the BALLS to own the said items they would only do TOB for a laugh
I am very wary of changing the game plotline though that would make vecna a mega mod? and i would be getting into a world of pain when it comes to compatibility, so virtually all the vecna content is offworld or places where one recalls or teleports to.
But yes i totally agree with you some change at the end of tob would be good to lead into vecna if not attempted before that. And yes if vecna was completed before that he/she would prob refuse godhood since they are effectively god killers. ( gods are children compared to the forces characters and plots in Vecna )
The current expansions are
Start of the search for the Rod of Seven Parts
"If you own the hand and eye, things are never the same again"

There is an open invite to other modders to write high/extream level adventures in the planes ( vecna curently provides 14 unpopulated, out of 50, areas where other modders can host their adventures, they just have to populate and script ) but as yet have had zero response, so doing it myself, but there is only me so its Slooooooow

Hi all what is this about a "fix" for vecna on BPv10?, what is the issue the fix is for? is it for versions pre v20? cos fairly confident v20 is free of serious bugs. If so what is the fix doing to v20 and v21 which am just about to release?

Oww now thats quite a load of game playing to get to vecna levels , i had a similar thing for the past 2 days the little Win tablet i do BG2 stuff on picked up a nasty virus/trojan/worm, had to reformat and reinstall, win,drivers etc etc etc, so put me back a bit. Just finishing up now and getting back to v19 which i hope is not far away, scripting is a pain!!!

Hi all V18 is up for download, the only things not checked now are Android1 encounter and final fight, all other reported bugs should be done with this version.

Thanks

Ps Hand and eye must be equiped/activated again to apply fixes

Hi all what is this about a "fix" for vecna on BPv10?, what is the issue the fix is for? is it for versions pre v20? cos fairly confident v20 is free of serious bugs. If so what is the fix doing to v20 and v21 which am just about to release?

It seems to fix several script errors, though I don't know if they're still present in the latest version of Vecna. All those patch files will be applied to their corresponding baf namesakes. Every - in front of a line means that this line will be removed and eventually replaced by the next line beginning with a +.

If you already fixed those script errors, the corresponding patches won't be installed, as they've got no faulty code to replace.

10th

Ur ok that sounds fine, as long as the patching code recognizes rewriting and/or extending of dialogs and scripts then all is cool ( oh and possible renaming )
Yes i believe everything is fixed, am waiting for any bug reports for v20, if there are none then v21 should be a wrap, will call it release candidate 1 and have a well earned rest from modding.

Thanks for that mate, i assume the patch was made for versions before v20, but i would advise people to download v20 rather then using the patch on previous versions, but each to their own

Well... dunno how to start, 'cause i got no complains nor bugs to report.

Let's put it that way: You mess with ToB!

A couple of weeks ago I enjoyed v12 of Your mod in a tactics install playing a solo C/M dwarf on insane.
As a member of the german kerzenburg forum I posted a review there, which, stressing by the way Fennek's one month ago post, may be condensed like that: ToB doesn't permit a Vecna Artifacts mod!

In fact, one could say the same thing in a much more polite way: If there had been a version x of Vecna in 2001, nobody would ever have designed ToB.

Vecna Artifacts (for me) is the natural continuation of HC's struggle to godhood: Saving his/her soul and fighting and gaining reputation amongst avatars of different gods until HC proves worthy of having the choice to accept or deny the throne of the god of murder. And obviously slaying yet another halfbreed like Ilasera=Nice Butt or Yaga-Shura=The Dumb or Sendai=The multiple schizophrenic should not be sufficient nor qualifying.

But we do have ToB!

So how can You suppose me to even CARE about some hostile drow in ToB, after that I've killed Orcus, Demorgorgon and Lloth(!) united in the final Vecna battle? A fingertip on there forehead should be sufficient to let them evaporate from the living side of the world. Whatever gelugon or pitfiend comes up to me I should adress: Well, I've already talked to your boss about your life. I'm sorry!

Well... dunno how to end, 'cause i got no complains nor bugs to report.

Just thinkin'....

What can i say, you are perfectly correct!! ( and very well put )
But i suppose same can be said for many Tactics games, where you can get to 30th lv+ before even bothering to sail to spellhold.

My only answer is to keep adding content to vecna, currently there are 50 new areas, when they are all fully populated that should be a LOT of hours of gameplay, maybe over 100, hopefully no one will miss TOB if they embark off-world before.

An obvious problem i have to address, and am really open to suggestions, is how to handle Watchers keep, I have 2 options,

1) Write code to modify watchers keep to reflect having faced demigorgon once before
2) Use another god for the final battle

I quite like the first option, it would tie Vecna more into the TOB plot-line, but then it would be logical to make many more changes to the TOB plot-line, and obviously rewrite the ending, but then we are into partial-conversion territory, and would immediately become incompatible with a lot of BW mods.

I would like to know what the BW community thinks.

Hi all Vecna V19 is uploaded and ready for DL.

Thats about it for the core adventure, have checked all keys and subquests are there, everything needed to get to the final battle is correct. I think i can now, with some confidence, say we are out of alpha and into beta1.

As you said in one of the posts above, I think it would be nice if one could play Vecna after one decided to become some sort of demi-god at the end of ToB. That doesn't mean that it should become impossible to start Vecna during ToB, but if it is encouraged to start it afterwards, it would be better in ways of storyline. Just my point of view...

And thanks for the new version!

Cool i agree, and if i make that mod an optional component then vacna will still be compatible with the other tob mods such as prophecy. Will start looking at it, expect something around v21

Hi all VecnaV21 i now uploaded, as mentioned before MUCH harder than v20, a real challenge, and have kept my original design goals, take whatever overpowered / uber / items or spells and you will still get a good fight

Still few things not perfect so not calling it RC1 yet, but nothing a player will notice, v22 will be done in approx a week and WILL be perfect, and WILL be RC1

Hi all as promised VecnaV22 is uploading now. I am designating this release as "Vecna Beta 1" from now on releases will be MUCH fewer as my time for modding is now very limited, i will still be responding to bug threads but further dev is on hold, its still a beta cos there are still issues, some monsters have to high ac and THAC0, to many items early on with timestop immunity, a lot of the cutscenes could be better.

Any experienced modder is welcome to iron out any bugs they find, and or add content to the planes, a post on the vecna thread to let me know would be nice

BP Compatibility..... I think at this stage Vecna is ready to go in the BP tactics list, although designated a beta i believe it is ready. But a warning that the difficulty level is astronomic is a good idea

hi all V23 is now finished and posted. no bugs now so RC1.Next version will be with sound music and text screens, oh yes also with spelljammer ships, cosmic battles, the whole AD&D meets Traveller experience

Hi all making this new thread just for people reporting bugs in VecnaV21 or later ONLY. ( if you are playing versions pre 21 please post in the other thread thanks )

On a different note, am looking into the second phase of veca ( just looking at the moment ) which involves the players embroiled in the traveller saga, and i would like the players to have a few encounters in a friggin huge space ship, bit like conan on the death star , this means a suitable perspective rendered background, i have tried my hand at 3DMax, and although i can manipulate the program, i just dont have the artistic skill to come up with anything i like ! So anyone have any ideas where i can rip a few suitable backgrounds from, old games, online games, anything that i can rip a jpeg from and size to suit.

V21........ Massive internal revision of virtually everything, quest quite bit harder now, less adventurous of you might well want to stick to v20

If I'm being a moron... sorry >.<

But where is version 20?

http://www.shsforums...ds&showfile=880

Oh bollocks! yes thanks for pointing that out, got my versions mixed, this release was supposed to be v20, v19 being the slightly less insanely hard version.
Have no idea what to do about it suppose v20 must be the "ghost" release since cant change the filename on the download system, will edit last post to avoid too much confusion, thanks again

hi all been working like a slave on v21 oh so very nearly finished, took about a week of solid effort to properly catalog all the items,check them test em etc ( 198 magic items ) and then the same for the creatures ( 201 creatures ). Phew!!!, sorry P+P fiends will not be in v21, other things are more pressing.

Cerest.......... well have made no definitive list, some ROT items are missing vvc refs hence graphics on the spells are no go but they still have their effects, some items ( not sure where from ) have permanent flags on equipping effects, which is very serious for slowdowns, well the list goes on, Planet sphere mod is a bit questionable, to make a definate list would take a structured approach, with vecna have no time

Mike......... EH!!! what bloody fix , yes am sure you dont need any fixes past v20, have checked v20, apart from loloth and orcus lacking script ( they just stand there ) everything works.
Note.... V21 is MUCH ( all the monsters in v21 have good intelligent scripts, mainly Tactics with a few of my own touches ) harder and is probably impossible outside of a BP game where you can stack up on super powerful kit.

I was hoping if anyone was "fixing" this mod they would post the problem then i could fix it, i am working on it big time and now would be a good time to flag any issues with bp since i wrote it for BP !

Ok from a brief Examination of the thread i can see there is an issue with a possible conflict am looking into that now.
I think! all the in game bugs are done.
V16 is uploaded.
V15 did not copy any 2da files over, so cant be that ( v16 has the lv 50 patch but as an optional component) can only be some of the resources i borrowed from BW and did not rename with the AA prefix, will rename them for v17 which is here soon.
Whatever it is will have it done for the weekend

Also i take everyones point about the lack of docs, doing that to.

I have kept the IA code which i dont see any problem with but will integrate the restores ( which actually threw me first time i set up IA )

V22 is ready and will be uploading tonight, I will consider this as a release candidate, everything if pretty finalised, and unless i get any posts otherwise the difficulty will not change. There will be V23 in a few months time but that will only involve music, text screens etc. I have plans for V24+ which now include custom rendered tilesets ( yay 3dmax ) , you will be battling in a starship But will depend on demand, if this mod gets popular i will implement V24+ but if not i think V23 will be the final one

where is V22,i can't find it,i want to reinstall BWP 10 with V22, thank you very much

Hi mike

not uploaded yet mate wanted to finish a script for the final battle. its done now so sometime tonight

Miloch am creating some new futuristic creature anims, A tank/cyborg type thing from Fallout2 , some robots and Flying Plasma Cannons etc from Starcraft, should i aim to make em fully IA compatible and publish them there or keep them within the vecna mod ? I doubt anyone else would ever use futuristic stuff in their mods? And if kept them within vecna would allow me more flexibility as regards anim slot types, and also is there a IA B6 in the pipeline, should i wait for that ?

You'll have to use the IA scheme anyway to get all those animations in your game (since otherwise the game only has hard-coded slots) so you may as well publish them there. Eventually, we have to overhaul IA so it uses only ANSI prefixes, not all the weird characters that throw Russian and other OSes for a nutty. But that will be a while unfortunately, unless Erephine or someone else gets to it first - I'll be bogged down with thesis work for some time. When we do that, we'll have to also change the patch in all the mods that use IA (so far, that's only your mod, Aurora and Pack Mule I think... hopefully not too many others).

Cool then will publish em at the IA thread when finished, obviously was going to stick to IA convention and suppose since am doing the bam compiling i can chose a slot-type to fit rather than trying to make an existing bam fit a prescribed slot-type. I like BIG graphics ( never forget meeting a cyclops for first time the bam really blew me away ) so plan most as 4 parters. Vecna already contains a 9 part ( 9x255x255 ) anim of the pheonix which fills the WHOLE screen when it goes off, through a shed load of experimenting i found thats the biggest graphic you can get into a VVC and display completely on screen, resizing, cutting and scaling can all be done in GIMP as long as its a single bam sequence.
Hey good luck on your thesis, should we call you doctor soon

Hi all Vecna V19 is uploaded and ready for DL.

Thats about it for the core adventure, have checked all keys and subquests are there, everything needed to get to the final battle is correct. I think i can now, with some confidence, say we are out of alpha and into beta1.


Cerest.......... will put your revisions into V20, will look at them tonight
.......... Um yes am aware of the planar sphere mod and the "shade of vecna" and at the moment have chosen to ignore it , if you read through this thread you will soon see that vecna is not only a god but one of the key players in the AD+D universe, In my mod you are facing cosmic powers, and unbelievable creatures, defiantly the hardest array of creatures ever seen in a BG2 mod yet Vecna never makes an appearance, why ?
Simply if Vecna appears in person ( being one of the rare group of gods and elders who do not use avatars ) everyone else will be dead, in the most ugly manner imaginable, 120 seconds later! Not much of an adventure
Vecna IS painful death , so defeating him, or any of his schemes, in the planar sphere is a bit rubbish.
As for the countless "xxxxxx of Vecna " from other mods, i would say they are all fakes made by ordinary mages mainly for profit. This will be painfully obvious when you get your hands on the real deal


Mike........... Yes you are totally safe with vecna, the quest is totally separate from BG2/TOB plot lines and any other mod plot line V19 is good to play since V20 will have a few harder fights.


edit......... cant open your zip file Cerest, either corupt or winrar does not like it, can you re-upload in rar format please. also careful with the setup file not to accidentally delete any formatting, also careful not to add or delete any CR's ( carrage return ), the text looks very different in game from that you see on a text editor

Am in the testing bug squashing phase of this quest, if anyone is playing it please post bugs as you go

I've got a big pb : it took me quite a while to download Vecna v 19 and the file was corrupted (at the end, according to WinRAR) !

Is it normal and may I download the v 21, or has anybody encounter the same pb ?

no not normal sounds like a bad dl to me. am dl V22 now to check everything is cool.If thats ok will check v19
Are you going to play it outside a megamod install ?

Sorry for having been so late, but yes, I will play it without any megamod.

Ah, well i hope you are a very experienced player!! Vecna is going to be quite a challenge without the extra kit and experience available in a mega mod, setting i sugest at least adding Alex Mackintosh Trader to your mod list , that store has lots of overpowered kit at stupidly low prices likewise for the Magnificent Magic Shop ( you can sell all your unwanted kit for FULL price no matter your prestige ). Please post back on your thoughts of the mod as you play,

Thanks

Hi all V18 is up for download, the only things not checked now are Android1 encounter and final fight, all other reported bugs should be done with this version.

Thanks

Ps Hand and eye must be equiped/activated again to apply fixes

mike........ any day now mate, am just finishing off, there has been SO MUCH work


Am trying to get weather to work in my areas ( thick fog ) anyone know of a tutorial on the subject or any info?

Hi guys, first welcome onboard Morianthi Am at work and on a bloody tablet ( who the hell said on screen keyboards were cool !!!, this whole tablet craze comes from a conspiracy of star wars fans , am sure ) so keep this short.

TR areas

11...Dragon Corridor
42...Undead Lab
13...Main Lab
12...Furnace Room
45...Meeting Room
20...Android 0 Cell
39...Horse temple
48...Liabrary 1
49...Liabry 1 Level 1
50...Liabry 1 Level 2
04...Liabrary 2
40...Pre throne
31...Throne


To get to loloths complex , first get the TR master key from 31, then get to 13, in the picture on the wall there is container with an " Astral map " this is a very special scroll which reveals the location of Loloths complex on the Astral, without it getting there is impossible.

Ok, please go and have a quick go and see what the bitch queen is up to, that will give you a flavour of what the REAL mod plays like, remember the TR complex is an INTRODUCTION, Loloths complex is 5 times as big and at least twice as tough. And that is itself also an introduction, the quest for the rod of seven parts will be 3-4 times the size of the entire mod so far and obviously tougher. I am actually rendering new area graphics for the rod quest with brand new character animations, by the time i am finished ( next year some time ) i plan it to be at least as big as SOA.

Will post a whole bunch of changes in a day or so as another hotfix ( that will cover all the observations so far ), and then if possible` you guys can play TR through again up to Launching after Loloth ?

Yes AAR020 is done and would be usefull to do since it gives some plot background.

There is a WHOLE bunch of music, sound effects, and text screens to do to give atmosphere and a bit of diversion from the carnage, only some will be in the hotfix.

Am creating script to detect if party has key Mega powered kit and bump up difficulty in key places to suite, after TR it should not matter what kit you have, if not so will adjust loloth complex accordingly,

Got to admit plain forgot to copy the timestop resistance strings into a lot of creatures, doing that now

Once again thank thanks thanks