280 replies to this topic

[Tempest]

The general discussion thread was getting cluttered, so I decided to go ahead and create a new thread for this purpose. From here on out, this is where I'll be mentioning new content, dropping hints, and for folks to give feedback on progress and whatnot. I hope this will clear things up a bit.

[Majes]

It's great that the romance is all written now. So, is all the writing done?

It's wonderful to see this come along so quickly.

[Kellen]

What is left after the coding of the special scenes and Anomen conflicts?

[berelinde]

alpha?

[Tempest]

Not quite. Writing the Darian-Mazzy romance and attendant banters with Valygar (and probably a couple of other special banters with Edwin, Korgan, and whatnot) will be my next objective, then writing Darian's other files (currently, the only files I actually have written are his initial dialogue file and his banter file), and putting the whole thing together. Then probably lots of proofreading. Finally, after all that, I'll see if I can actually figure out how to work WeiDu and get Darian functioning in-game for testing.

[Tempest]

A minor update/change for those interested: I'm changing Darian's attitude a bit in the first phase of the romance. I felt he was softening towards Charname too quickly (if you read the fanfic I write, you should be able to understand why-I really find Darian much more interesting when he *has* softened towards her). As it is now, you'll still see some hints that his feelings for you are a bit more complex than he insists they are, but he keeps that side of himself firmly locked down (the lovetalk I previewed is a good example: he's on the verge of admitting he admires Charname, but immediately clamps down when he realizes he's wandering into dangerous territory).

[Kulyok]

One final caveat: if Darian and Mazzy have reached a certain point in their relationship by the time Charname tries to redeem herself, she's out of the picture: Darian's heart belongs to someone else.

That's something that made me wonder - if he shifts to another relationship so readily, maybe his heart never belonged to Charname in the first place?

[Tempest]

That's precisely my point: Darian falls more Mazzy far more readily than he will for Charname, but I'm simply keeping the Mazzy thing from kicking in while there's still the possibility of a Charname-Darian relationship, because Mazzy would win every time, simply because Darian has such a hard time even admitting he considers Charname a friend. He doesn't even consider himself to be in a relationship of any sort with Charname up until the last couple of lovetalks (which only appear at RA 2 or 4), and only considers it an increasingly deep relationship once RA hits 2 in Spellhold. That said, it *still* isn't a formal relationship up until Darian's final scene in Chapter 6.

One thing I forgot: if you end the relationship AFTER the first scene in Spellhold where Darian's RA may go to 2, there's no redeeming yourself. He opened up to you and said some things that were extremely hard for him. This will forever change his opinion of you: either you and he both know he's developing feelings for you and you encouraged (or at least supported) him, he knows that however he may feel, you do not welcome his emotions, in which case he'll keep a clamp on his emtions, or you *really* blew things, in which case Darian wouldn't touch you with a ten-foot halberd. In any case, after this point, his opinion of you is set in stone.

So, if you have Mazzy in the party while you intend to romance Darian, either don't screw up in the romance (not hard-Darian's pretty straightforward) or talk him into a second chance immediately.

The Charname-Darian romance has always been intended to be a slow, extremely reluctant thing on Darian's part. Again, Mazzy's something of a special case.

Edited by Tempest, 29 April 2007 - 04:25 AM.

[Neferit]

And, if I can figure out how to script it, Darian may have a flirt or two that only occur in the rain or snow, which I'm not sure if any other mod npc has done before (though I know Aklon's speculated on it).

I remember that I once was entertaining myself with changing weather in game via CLUAConsole but now I have absolutely no idea how was that damned code My memory is sometimes pretty useless (especially while writing tests at school )

Edited by Neferit, 06 May 2007 - 01:20 PM.

[Tempest]

Actually, I found a wonderful little thread over at Gibberlings3 that explained how to set up a weather-specific flirt/dialogue. The way it will work is that a script causes a certain weather effect to trigger while setting a (short) timer, triggering the dialogue when the timer expires as well as resetting the weather. Currently, there is snow flirt for RA 2, though I might add a second, as well as a rain flirt, maybe. I don't want to get out of hand with Darian and local weather conditions.

Also, stay tuned for a preview of a player-initiated flirt and maybe a RA 2 Darian-initiated flirt either tonight or sometime tomorrow-the player-initiated flirts are my current goal.

[berelinde]

This one's a comment on the flirt preview.

Very nice, but if you're planning on making it repeatable, you're going to want to have several random results.

Also, if you want to keep a thread clean, you can always close it after you post to prevent people from tacking on their replies by mistake.

[Tempest]

Well, microsoft word is running again, but I lost all my progress on player-initiated flirts.

I think I'll end up making the dancing flirt non-repeatable, actually. It's very much meant to be an opportunity to see Darian unwind-he is an elf and does enjoy dancing and revelry, whatever his overlying personality might be like, and both a serious Charname and a playful one will have their options.

[Solstice]

4. Neither am I, but let's make fools of ourselves together!
5. (Grab Darian by the arm and drag him onto the dance floor)

[Kulyok]

All flirt ideas taken from the suggestion thread will be credited to their originator in Darian's readme when I get to that point.

I think it's going to be difficult: some of the suggested flirts and scenes have long been available in various NPC mods before they were suggested there - and I, for one, haven't seen a single original flirt idea(an idea that hasn't been implemented in one or more romances already) in that thread. I think the only thing that can be said for sure is that the flirt system itself was developed and introduced in Kelsey mod(well, that and looping Bioware dialogue in J files ).

[Tempest]

What I will probably end up doing is making a "Special Thanks" section in the readme, and crediting everyone who's contributed and been helping me along the way as I make this happen. I couldn't have gotten this far without a lot of help from other people, and the list is only likely to grow, especially when the time comes for beta testing. That seems a long way off, but it's very likely to be sooner than I think, as soon as I get out of the mire of the player-initiated flirts...

[Solstice]

Well, good luck and godspeed writing the flirts-you've got an audience awaiting a certain winged elf.

[Ankhes]

I registered here just for Darian! He sounds sooo great and interesting. This romance sounds different from any other and that just means that it will be so hard for me to wait for it.
No pressure but I can hardly wait for a alpha or a beta.
The Mazzy romance part sounds interesting, but since I want him for myself she won't have a chance. I may not take her along because I won't want to mess up. I read the overview and it sounds like it shouldn't be easy to make a mistake and ruin things with Darian but I don't want to risk it, I think!

Edited by Ankhes, 16 May 2007 - 08:21 PM.

[Tempest]

Another one?! Wasn't expecting this much interest in Darian...

This romance sounds different from any other

It should be-I've been working hard to make it a very distinct romance from the word go. And when ToB comes, at the player's choice, you can start something that's very rarely been touched on by any mods, and certainly never developed anywhere near to the extent I have in mind. Not saying anything more publicly until the time comes to begin Darian's ToB content, but send me a PM if you really, really want to know.

I may not take her along because I won't want to mess up.

Not to worry. The Mazzy-Darian relationship will only kick in if you've killed the Charname-Darian romance. And there's only one point in the romance with Darian where there's a tricky dialogue choice, when it comes to not ending the relationship. Generally speaking, all the romance-ending choices are quite obvious, as is the one time a wrong dialogue choice will make Darian leave the party.

[Tempest]

I am new to coding, yes, but remember that all of Darian's banters and lovetalks are coded, and there's nothing fancy going on with Darian, aside from the forgiveness concept, which I may end up pulling from the mod. Writing the flirts is by *far* the hardest part of things, thus far.