IA:EE progress report, thoughts, general observations, etc. Options

[critto]

The work is on-going, so I'll try to keep everybody updated on the progress in here. Also, people sometimes ask questions about how this or that functions, I can't answer these questions immediately and lose track of them. When I can I'll address these issues in this thread for the benefit of everybody.

This post has been edited by critto: May 18 2016, 03:51 PM

[critto]

It's been more than half a year since the last progress report. As usual, real life gets in the way of things and the work slows down. We've done a nice little push in a couple of last weeks, however, and I feel confident to say that IAv6.2 will be out very soon. Meanwhile, here's a bit of info on what's been going on.

Last time, I've talked about our improvements to the Avenger class. We did change quite a few things since then and the final result turned out different, but the class is now fun and satisfying to play. Jaheira is a strong addition to the team. To celebrate the fact, we've also crafted a new surprise encounter to one of those early mundane quests that everyone tries to get out of the way as soon as possible. Of course, as all things in IA, it is not without its rewards. In the end, the player will be able to craft a nice new item which Jaheira'll love, as will, eventually, the druid protagonist of IAv7.

While on the subject of items, we did a few more tweaks here and there, all in the name of creating more variativity and improving replayability value. In the same spirit, we're bringing on board more of the in-game NPCs, making them a viable option for a party member. This feels important to me as a player who've never really loved playing with a party of multiplayer-created custom characters. The IAv6.2 will most certainly feature Aerie, Jan, Korgan and Mazzy, in addition to Jaheira and Minsc who already have proven themselves in play tests. For those who are worried about fights between party members and high reputation issues, I intend to provide a built-in optional component that'll fix these potential problems, in the spirit of the classic Weimer's ease-of-use tweaks.

Another cool thing that we are testing right at the moment is the improved Demogorgon battle. It never felt right to end the epic dungeon crawl with such an anticlimatic event. We thought to amend this flaw and provide a satisfying and challenging finale. I have had little experience with encounter design until this moment and hope that it'll turn out to be fun and in the spirit of IA's tactical challenges. Thankfully, I have expirienced players who help me to play-test and refine the new adventure, so I am not completely without assistance.

Speaking of team effort, the very same team members who help me test the new release happen to have a knack for working with IE graphics. This has allowed us to do some cool things such as adding new item icons, spell animations and so on. We're now looking into new creature animations and, if everything goes according to plan, even IAv6.2 will feature some new unique graphics, improving overall visual aestethics and reducing the percentage of reused material.

As usual, there were also minor bugs and typos found along the way. For those who play IA on top of the recently released Enhanced Edition, the Beamdog is almost ready to release the new big patch 2.0 for the game along with the new expansion. It is designed to serve as a prelude to the events of BG2 so, hopefully, there will be no problems in running IA. I am looking forward to the new release, hoping that it'll fix many nasty issues, the most notable being duplication of kit bonuses and horrible pathfinding.

One last thing to mention is that as of IAv6.2, I will distribute the mod as my own personal expansion based on the great work done by Sikret. I realize that I have taken IA in the direction that might not agree with Sikret's vision. As did Sikret, I develop the mod according to how I would've enjoyed playing it, even though I try to keep it as much in spirit of the original as possible. Therefore, I intend to publish IAv6.2 independently and ask Baronius to upload the original IAv6.0 as a separate download for those who want to play the version that Sirket had worked on.

Cheers,
critto