[Release] The Mine of Malan Vael

[Komag]

Well then I have to restart, which is frustrating. I don't have any food other than the new-found bread and two grim caps.

EDIT - I fired up the console and

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spawned in a couple snail slices, added to table, that did the trick!

[Skuggasveinn]

While cleaning the copy of my mod_assets folder from all the leftovers (psd files mainly, but also ase files, backups, test assets etc) I noticed that only 145mb were left - less than the packed mod currently has. It seems like the dungeon editor throws everything from the mod_assets folder into the dat file and not just the defined assets.

That is a pitfall I have seen many mods take.
If you want to you can also clean up some of the alpha channels on textures that don't need them (your intro.dds has alpha and is about 10meg, you can get it down to 1.3meg just with that one texture.)

There is another thing that's confusing me and thats the normal maps (not specific to this mod, just in general). when generating normal maps you need alpha for the height reference, but when you have generated the map you don't need it. the colors of the alpha map (RGB) represent the X, Y, and Z values of a directional vector instead of just a color, and the values have to be vector unit lenth of one between the RGB channels (thats way all normal maps have the same color palette since only a handfull of colors can give us this exect unit lenght)
When removing the alpha channel from normal maps I see no visual difference ingame, but it can effect the size of the export dat to a great degree.
People seem to leave the alpha channel in normal maps because thats how it is in the asset pack, it would be great to get someone from AH to tell us what the engine is doing (if anything) with the alpha in normal maps.

Sorry for the rant The only reason why I bring this up is because I went ahead with your source and removed all alpha channels from every texture that didn't need it (normals also, but some textures have transparency and need alpha) and the exported dat is about 60meg total.
You could with easy get this on SteamWorkshop if you so wanted, that's where the masses of gamers are, that never come here or to the nexus, they just want to click a button and play (and who can blame them)

And they should be able to play this, because this is great.

Skuggasveinn.

[Neikun]

I was wondering why the source files are small enough for the Workshop, but the DAT isn't.

[flatline]

The sun dial puzzle on level 3 has me stumped:

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I get that it is a sun dial / lighting puzzle and the hint is from midnight to noon, but all my tests fail
North could be midnight, as that is where the sun is during nighttime.(east=dawn, west=dusk, south=noon) Or complete darkness could be midnight, and noon could be complete light
I thought I might need to fill all torchholders, or just move 1 torch from holder to holder and lots of variations on that. Nothing works. Tried it in reverse too since the shadow is what gives the time, rather than the position of the torch. Dear world, have I gone dumb?

[Batty]

The sun dial puzzle on level 3 has me stumped:

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I get that it is a sun dial / lighting puzzle and the hint is from midnight to noon, but all my tests fail
North could be midnight, as that is where the sun is during nighttime.(east=dawn, west=dusk, south=noon) Or complete darkness could be midnight, and noon could be complete light
I thought I might need to fill all torchholders, or just move 1 torch from holder to holder and lots of variations on that. Nothing works. Dear world, have I gone dumb?

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Start with north, (the compass helps) and move 1 torch clockwise from holder to holder. It might start with south, but go clockwise anyway.

[Komag]

I was stuck there too, EXACT same description as flatline, read your answer (thanks!), didn't work for me though, until

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I kept going and landed on South. Tried again to test, start on South, move torch all around, end on south, opens.

[Batty]

Komag, have you gotten past the:

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four times four puzzle? If so, SPILL IT!

[Komag]

is that just the cycling teleporter? I don't remember a title on that room, so probably not. I just made it to level 4, need to go to bed now, finish in the morning.

THIS DUNGEON IS AMAZING AND AWESOME!

Here are all my play notes so far:

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- intro awesome, music, story, love it
- first rooms look incredible, amazing high quality new tileset, so very well done
- pickaxe says requires skill axe 0, strange
- I like the notes by Malik
- gearing up a bit fast, but okay
- spotted my first secret button, nice!
---(I prefer that they "toggle" secret walls, not just open, feels more "right" to me I guess)
- good timing puzzle with three gates, but after making through (on first try), then push button in hall around corner, gates are open, good
---(but when I press the first two buttons, now the gates close after a bit - should just stay open forever I think, plates too should no longer bring gates down)
- uh oh, worker entrance broke, big quake!
---(now what? seem stuck...)
- can't seem to have any effect on mine cart
- went back through entire mine, no other way to go
- no idea what to do, guess I'll wander around AGAIN
- tried using pickaxe on things - rocks, cart, walls, no luck
- okay, I give up, frustrated, will ask on forums and wait for clue/spoiler.
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- got spoiler, can proceed (I think some sort of audio feedback would help, like a tiny click for steps on tracks, or something)
- love the bits of "crooked" track
- love the mine gear, carts, etc
- some fights, some exploring
- found room with tables, herder, note
- noticed little clicks in hall nooks, put pickaxes there, got secret room stash, nice
- found bag, nice stuff
- table, "serve dinner", oops, what was in bag??? tar bead, bread, grim cap? throwing knife
- nothing working on table, stuck again
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- got answer, spawned snail slices to make enough food, continuing
---(very possible for players to not have enough food for the table, like me)
---(perhaps the "serve the dinner" should be a scroll or note, not a wall plaque)
- Syncronicity pretty cool, but quite difficult - I hope slower computers can do it, like my laptop
- went to pits room, made across, but jumped in anyway
- secret, book, very nice!
- plates held by item only? odd. Teleporter to next square over? effect of items on plates? no idea
- up stairs, got formula note, on the other side of pits! teleporter just goes back?
- finally on a wild idea figured out to drop rocks from above (maybe a little more clue about that for thick heads like me)
- got to end of lv 1, iron door, need key, WHERE? not about to scour map to search for it now, maybe find it on lv 2 (but that seems unlikely)
- spider fight! yikes!
- WOW, huge pit area! time to jump in!
- fight some scavs, no problem. button is to OTHER door? back up
- fight crowerns, toss items to "island" plates, continue? no, jump down!
- holy heavens, I love the views of the tall walls going up! (I jumped down that??)
- lots of exploring, went back up, explore, crystal, loot, fight crowerns, now fighting many spiders
- avoiding eggs (will kill them later!), found book of dodge! small error - it gives the dodge first, then prints hudprint, should be other way around
---(with me it first said I gained evade, then said I gained dodge, makes more sense to see messages the other way around)
---(not nitpicking, I'm really enjoying this! just pointing out tiny errors so author can fix if desired)
- ports now open, got key
- killed eggs - nothing
- back to other side, try to grab key! fun!
- teleport sound continues after grabbing key?
- YES I have faith! what, no jump down? I'm going back to jump down other side
- oh man, I still love the tall vistas!
- GAAH, found an ornate key!
- found a plate, weighed it down
- lots of good gear down here
- back up, cross faith bridge, zap alley! with a wyvern at the end, perfect! seriously, that was poetic.
- decided time to use fancy key, opened iron door on lv 1, got nice loot!
- big battle, worked out well, tough but fair, great loot
- another iron door! oh well, down stairs
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- exploring supplies, lots of loot.
- OGRE! what? have to kill boxes at fast as I can, reload, try again, reload, try again, again, again...
- now ogre stops chasing me, won't step around that corner? this is odd.
---(Maybe should be a gate I run through and it closes behind me from plate stepped on, something like that)
- finally killed him off, bugger!
- noticed that I can't seem to place any items on floor in front of some alcoves, they always go up into the alcove
- nice spellcraft book (same issue as before, hudprint message would be nice to come first)
- Ooo, love the little stalagmite noon puzzle, very cool! (but solution was elusive - okay I guess)
- found another fancy key!! went back up, got nice loot, back down
- more exploring
- teleporter round, 4 plates, good puzzle!
- end of level 3, another iron door with no key!
- decided to go back and explore big pit area, found a third nook with a plate, now I have three of them weighted down, searching for any effect...
---(holy cow, while searching for effect, went all back to lv 1, killed a crates, found fancy key!!!)
- on way back, found super secret room! crossbow makes me wish I did bows rather than throwing
- back to iron door, have key now, get good loot, descending to lv 4
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(going to bed, finish tomorrow)

[Phitt]

Again, thanks for the comments. Here are a few answers:

The 'Serve the dinner' puzzle was already solved by the people who asked, but the idea is that you need to put four food items on the table since there are four chairs around the table. That's all there is to it. The secret room you can find when pushing the button in the room with the herder has a good amount of food and a respawning snail, so if for some reason you should have no food you can get as much as you want there (though the snail respawns every 30 seconds only and only if you are not close to the room). Note that everything you can eat counts as food, that means you can use Grimcaps as well.

Like already explained by someone else the puzzle on level 3 is some kind of 'sun dial'. If you look closely you will see that the rocks on the floor are ordered like a clock face and the torch shadows work like a watch hand. If you put a torch into the southern torch holder the clock will be at 12 o'clock (or 'midnight'). Move the torch around clockwise (to 3, 6, 9 and again 12 - noon) and the door will open.

Food was a problem for beta testers as well btw, but I added a good amount of additional food to the dungeon before release. Wouldn't have thought you would still run out of food that easily! On my last playthrough I ended up with around 20 food items left when I entered the boss room, already wondered whether it was too much now! Of course that was a speed run (where I killed all monsters and opened all secret areas though), but still...

And I wonder whether anyone actually played the ogre encounter like I intended it to work. You are not supposed to fight him in the room where you meet him - there is no space to avoid his blows and I assumed it was more or less impossible to kill him there. I put in the wall text and Malik's note to give you a hint. The way I intended it is that you use the frost bombs you found a few steps away in an alcove in the storage area to stop him, hack your way through the crates until you reach the door, close the door. Then kill the two scavengers and afterwards you have all the time in the world to kill the ogre, you can even use the 'hit and strafe' tactic in that room so it shouldn't be very hard to kill him there. Maybe I should make it more clear by letting Malik talk about frost bombs directly.

The reason why the ogre sometimes gets 'stuck' is Grimrock's AI. I guess you already noticed that monsters often don't find the way around obstacles, there is nothing I can do about that. I already gave the ogre seeInvisible, allAroundSight and sight = 7, I put blockers on top of the blockages, but he still gets stuck sometimes and walks back instead of following the player. That happens in the original game as well, wish I could do something about it.

@Skugs: The reason why I left the alpha channel in on some textures where it is not needed is an advice by the devs. The affected textures are uncompressed textures (normal maps, intro image and icon atlas) and I used to save them as 8.8.8 RGB instead of 8.8.8.8 ARGB when I didn't need the alpha channel. But then this happened:

viewtopic.php?f=14&t=3468&p=35411&hilit=argb#p35411 (Read my post and the post below by petri)

I trust the devs, that's why I rather have a larger file size than less performance. I just exported the cleaned dungeon and dat size is 80mb, which is good. Guess I can bring it down to 60 by 7zipping it.

[Xanathar]

It seems like the dungeon editor throws everything from the mod_assets folder into the dat file and not just the defined assets.

I confirm this; I even noticed that if you have lua files lying around under your mod_assets folder, with garbage inside, the dungeon won't export as it will complain about errors in scripts which are effectively not used anywhere.