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Forum » Port Potomac

Port Potomac

Pete 13 years ago
So yeah I have this mod here that Ive been sitting on for like three weeks now without making a single change, so I see no reason to delay it any further. Its not very innovative, original, or fun, but I do like to think its a good way to waste forty minutes or so.

Port Potomac!


So yeah, do me a favor and give it a shot! Pretty please?

By the way is it just me or did that age-old forum theme Ive been using dissapear all of a sudden?

[Self centered Edit>]Also comments, comment, comment with comments! I love attention!

Edited 11 years ago
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MageKing17 13 years ago
Is it based on one of the real-world places called Potomac or is it a completely fictional setting?
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Pete 13 years ago
Well I needed a name and the place was to be a port and I was playing Fallout 3 at the time, so... but it doesnt actually have anything to do with the real deal, no.
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Endymion 13 years ago
Wow I actually managed to find that tiny download link it was quite well hidden.
Anyway since I'm bored I'll describe my experience with the mod from start to finish and mention all kinds of pointless things.

Part 1:
First of all deciding how to go about making it work took a few seconds and menu background was neat.

Note in the beginning reminds me of this and gives a feeling that succeeding would be important and that I'll probably end up "living under the bridge" in some way before succeeding(it can't be that easy.) also lack of supplies implies getting them would be important.
So I start in some place and have a cool map with me but the name in the map is different from the one said at the beginning, even so I look at the map and determine that I'm probably around what I later discover to be a weapon shop. Some beggar tries to get money from me without saying exactly what will he give in exchange although other than that he sounds brilliant so I set out in search of money and other loot but apparently I already have enough. So after failing to notice handle-less door and finding lighting a bit lacking in some parts I give the gold to the guy.

A ship. talking with people who are insistent on keeping conversations short yields nothing except info about nap in a cabin and my rudder gets stolen. (Adding some "Was that all?" type stuff or something to conversations would reduce the repetitiveness of restarting them constantly.) Complaining about lack of entertainment sadly didn't result in anything interesting. I was excepting a battle with monsters or something.
Inside, ladder and walls give impressive feeling but the cargo hold doesn't get me interested since walking under the doorway reveals only darkness and no-one even mentioned anything about whether I'm allowed to go there or what's in there(and no sound effect for opening attempt). Note on the table is neat as deciphering that pick up just means talking to someone may take "a while" and memorizing the phrase seems worthwhile. Tables are awfully heavy compared to chairs.

I enter a dream and run away from the scary dog(instead of just killing it (only?) for meat and exp) and then get beaten up in a freaky way. Atmosphere was nice and quite intriguing overall especially the ticking noise was nice but locking the way back to bed might be worthwhile as running back there after pulling the switch and not getting attacked isn't very exciting. Of course just running around the red thingy until dog gets stuck isn't very so either(at least once it gets stuck due to lack of path nodes). Being less confined in the latter part might make it seem less futile to resist and increase the time it takes to determine that there's nothing you can do but give up. Making sure that you can't stay alive as long as you like might be little hard or require boring solutions. Being able to use the rudder in the dream some way would be neat, I was rather annoyed at the bastard for taking it away and it just disappearing if I refused to talk about it.
Overall ship was kind of boring except for the dream part. Improving the dialogue a little and making the note little more interesting to find (i.e. put a locked door there and give the key to skeleton or something) should help.

Then I land in some not very port like place(two shoddy piers and a tower(that'd look like a watchtower if there wasn't that little thing on top of it) and no city didn't really fit my idea of a place with port in its name(but it doesn't really matter).
Latter part of the note(beginning of it doesn't really say anything) and the hint sound... promising in a way. Especially the hint.
I look at the map again and have no idea where on it I am but after little exploring I'm guessing that at the upper part. I head south first since I pay more attention to a cool tower than some crap on ground that might depending on interpretation look like a very short road or not(if I had started at the other pier maybe I'd have headed north first) Well I guess usually the last thing I do is go where I'm supposed to so maybe noticing it or not had very little effect on my decision. Invisible cliff and a dark cave later I'm heading north along the edge but it starts to get dark and I hurry through the pointlessly large forest and check that there's nothing in west before passing a sign that I didn't notice and heading through the opening in fence.(unless there'll be something preventing it in the north-east moving the gate to around the level of end of "road edges"(or maybe a little higher like the top part of the beach) would do wonders.)

Suddenly I'm inside a city even though I saw nothing like it outside but I don't mind as all I see is lots of very nice looking buildings in slightly odd lighting. Then I see someone being mugged and talk to them but fail a check and remember that saving could have been good idea so I restart with more int and quickly after running back to a bed, killing the dreamdog and trying to smuggle a rudder with me I'm back in the city. In weapon shop I get a staggering amount of options including some things that are on a wall that I have yet to see(how about moving the items on the wall to separate dialogue that requires clicking the item and removing the daggers(since I probably shouldn't buy any of them) or dividing bows and "swords" to separate "menus"). Ground around the fireplace isn't walkable :O I leave the shop empty handed after asking only about fire sword.

I click the shield on the ground and find a pouch and some coins I get slightly confused by the pouch. is it an item? how much money did it have? I try to talk to some guy and check the stalls but refrain from wasting money on such things. But as I ask about the jewels and their price conversation ends promptly without letting me ask about their purpose. I start the conversation again and then move on without noting lack of footwear or presence of jewels in a clothing shop.

I walk around the square from bottom-left and enter the first door I find to discover myself in a tavern(it seems you need to check the bottom of the door to see if it's in use or not). In getting a dagger there is sadly no need to remember what exactly was I supposed to say(having no way around int check was interesting I suppose but perhaps it would be better if it was structured a little differently like remembering his name wrong if int is too low while having "knowledge" or something) and gold it provides sadly prevented me from not having enough of it when I went to buy the basic kit. Then I'm "forced" to accept a quest just for asking what kind of quest it might be. I decide to hold on doing it until I find a fire to cook the meat from my dream.

In the Adventurers's Haven(which IMHO should be where the weapon shop is or in the white house in front of it) I buy the basic kit since it's obviously most useful one of them since it has torches that I can use for cooking and exploring and I have no money for the others. Then I'm informed about clues and a journal and receive the goal of exploring that cave I wasted so much time in finding(I guess it's nice to know where to find it). Before heading there I give the meat I cooked to quest, explore the sewers(sadly discovering nothing even potentially interesting) and convince the mugger to abandon his plans and choose the adventurer's charm since it sounds interesting and noting that most of those talents clearly wish they could have conditions. I also find the FastTravel and like the guy's ability even tough I can't find him anywhere else at least anymore, it would be more interesting if the ship with him was accessible from the beach.

I notice that doors, while they do their job fine, some of them could have a little more variation and detail in them (using same texture all the time makes them easy to spot but harder to remember which was which and having details like handles or "windows" would make them more memorable) also instead of doors transporting you instantly maybe they could open and reveal an entrance behind them but having to click twice just to enter a house might become annoying, not to mention requiring more time to make.

In the cave I had trouble with the first part of the ledge I kept trying to somehow reach the other end of it. After that I had to run around a little since I didn't save before getting in a fight but managed to lose the wolves for long enough to find armour and regen enough health to take weaker of the two left and luckily I got health thing from it so I didn't need to retreat across the ledge. I liked how there wasn't too much random crap at each dead end and stuff in the diary sounds quite similar to what's happening. After that I wonder where in the world could that watchtower be but guess I should go talk to Virgil...
To be continued.
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Anne 13 years ago
This looks impressive, Pete! Ville and I already started on it a little - just purchaced our "basic pack" - and it seems interesting. Quite a lot of work probably went into this, I suspect? We'll have to leave the rest for later, but hope to finish it soon.

I started my day job, after my maternity leave, a few months back, so since then my support with Driftmoon has been mostly psychological... It's great that Ville has support from you guys here! Ville mentioned he already got a few nice ideas from Port Potomac. Nice work, Pete!
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Endymion 13 years ago
So I got the hint for watch tower and happen to look at the map and realise that it's map of the city area... So all I learn thanks to it is that those blocked roads should lead somewhere(Making the map be of whole island with one section dedicated to city or just making it look more city like and have clear entrance point would be nice.)
The diary room in the cave could have been better in some way but I'm not sure how. Maybe have the body a little further away from table or something.

Then I go shopping and check out FastTravel. After checking that a better weapon would be a good idea I buy one and move on and do the bandit quest, the watchtower and use an egg.
So what'd I think after that?
Adventurer packs don't have any use yet and using bows seem bad as they cost money constantly, but if for example there were some enemies with high melee damage and low hp a bow would be very attractive option, that is if I knew about it. health was more valuable. Firesword in addition to doing most damage pretty much removes the need for torches and magical aura. I think firesword should cost close to 200 so that you need to either do bandit quest or sell the jewel to get it and The sword(or the ring) in dream pack should be a little bit better as right now only worthwhile thing you get from it is fireflowers.
Enemy drops like bows from bandits and shields from skeletons should be removed (by making them use different version of their weapons that have only in editor true) to make sure shops aren't unnecessary.

The bandit quest was ok almost got killed the first time around and then had no trouble at all with a better sword. Reward from it is quite good for an easy side-quest. Also making the bandits return back to their camp under some conditions would prevent luring them out of there to darkness not that it'd have any effect on difficulty or anything but just be nice I guess(and what's up with campfires dying after a while?). Also the road was too wide for my torch so I zigzagged up it. Adding some torches sparingly along the edges might be nice(for example 2 between path and entrance and another 2 around the blockade).

Watchtower's outside was quite nice in that it's quite hard if you just walk in but much easier if you sneak a little.
Basement was very nice too. Especially with only my sword as light source.

Other observations:
Mugger could be a bit harder to kill considering how good the reward is.
"right" doesn't exactly scream of "No thanks, I'm not buying it!"(and why is it the first choice?)
Amounts of money you can gain in different situations seems quite well thought out.
Idea of using blackrocks for spells seems nice.
Arena was neat or would be if some reward or goal was added. Limiting access to the place was very nice.
I like how most locations are very nice and compact.


I hope I haven't scared other people from commenting with my walls of text...
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Pete 13 years ago
Wow. Are you by any chance a professional beta tester? [/me takes notes]
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Venom31 13 years ago
"Endymion" said:
I hope I haven't scared other people from commenting with my walls of text...
No, but many of us are still reading...
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ville 12 years ago
We demand a new version!
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Pete 12 years ago
Ill get around to it, eventually - still have an exam or two to wrap up

Plus, this will be a lot more work.
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ville 12 years ago
Just remember, if it's crashing mysteriously and doesn't give an error message, send it to me and I'll fix it straight away! Or at least make it give an error.
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Pete 11 years ago
Aaand only a year later Ive decided to actually do that!

Or, well, at least get the original back into working condition.

*cough*

Anyway, this now works again. Woop.

Now to get back to work on the mod that is actually new - as soon as I convince myself to stop moving the same bloody rock back and forth.
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Anne 11 years ago
Good job, Pete! It's a great mod! So, if you're reading this, and haven't tried it yet, now is the perfect time to correct the error!
Edited 11 years ago
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Death Knight 11 years ago
Hi pete, I dont want to bug you or anything, but im lost in port potomac as a few quests dont show up. The money pouch quest wont register as i found the pouch in the sewer. Also im a bit unsure where to go to advance the plot. If you or anyone knows of this, Id be grateful to know as i found it to be a great mod.

In fact, I like what you did pete on the gain agility and other stat perks better than the regular game perks. I hope that ville and anne put those perks in the game as i found them very useful and falloutish.
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Pete 11 years ago
For the pouch: this is a bit embarassing to say, but I havent actually put in a "be a good person" option... the pouch is really there just to get more money. It is an excellent point though, so I shall endeavour to rectify the issue.

For quests in general: back when I made this mod, the quest system didnt quite work as advertised yet, so I havent actually hooked any quests up to the system. Now that someone complained, however, I might just be able to find the motivation to do so

EDIT: Aaand done.

Edited 11 years ago
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Death Knight 11 years ago
Thanks. So what is the main place to go to fight monsters and gain experience in your mod? In my case I'm just looking for things to do and gain a lot of lvls.
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Pete 11 years ago
Lets see, the progression is: The intro > Potomac city > Beach cave > Watchtower, with an optional stop at the bandit road somewhere along the way. If for some reason you want to continue playing after that, there is always the easter egg arena.
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Death Knight 11 years ago
Thanks thats awesome! I hope that when this game comes out 100%, there are just as many people like you that are making cool games.
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