Messages

Eitri:

Spoiler

> Do you have any human tools which you may have bought or picked up which he might like?
I tried giving him the flintbox, the pick, the scarf, the vials... He doesn't like them.

> I don't understand why you thought that the wings dispell fire.
I think I mixed up several legends. After reading too much mythology, it appears I invented a legend of my own! Haha. I thought I read somewhere that these were like Odin's wings, that would flap so hard that they would create a magical wind that would extinguish the fire. If it all comes from my head, that's pretty funny
Maybe I'll meet the swan lady later on. That would make more sense. The blacksmith's wife said she doesn't want to say where she comes from, and "cannot go back". And she has feathers in her hair. Yet, she doesn't want the wings. So, I'm confused. I have no idea how I missed that before. I was convinced I had tried.

> Try and find somewhere where a fish would go.
I saw a fish jump out of the water, in the room with the squishy corals. But it happened so fast and never happened again, so I thought it was just an element of decoration for the room.


> Find Loki and then you will see what you can do with him.
I have already. He gets pretty mad at the loser Aegir who wants to bring Ragnarok himself. So I'm hesitating to set him free, and I wouldn't know how to do anyway (I tried disspell, fire, wind and other spells on him, the servant and the snake, to no avail).

> There is something else in the slider area to do,
I'm surprised by this. I used the sliding puzzle to make sure that all weird connections around the puzzle (outside of it) would be interconnected, and imagined it would be enough.
My understanding of what you said is that the real important things to connect are the funny pieces inside the puzzle, not the cnnections around. I'll have a closer look at them and try to guess what rooms they represent.

> sliding puzzles in themselves are boring, but the fun bit about this was figuring out what the sliding board does
I love the idea that the puzzle controls something in the real world. But sliding puzzles are not boring. They're just incredibly hard for people who don't have the skills! It's like Rubik's cube: some people find it easy, some people just can't do it. I'm pne of those.


> you can't do anything about it once it's ash.
So sad It would be cool if it grew back. It's silly (ok, not that silly) that there is an entire room full of crystals, and you can take only one of them, only once.

[close]

[riddles]

I've reached a stage where I've completed a lot of quests and don't have much clues left to solve the remaining ones.
So please do forgive me for asking plenty of questions together. (also, please forgive me for never using the actual names of the characters. I can never ever remember them!)

Spoiler

Note: I'm playing sorceress, and I have access to neither the fishnet, the red gem nor the mirror, as they got stolen by the thief and I have the bug preventing from opening the thieves' guild despite using Sixth Sense.


- I have 3 riddles so far, but no answer yet to any of them. Since all the people seem to want to ask new riddles before giving answers to the ones I know, it could continue forever that way
- I'm not sure if I'm supposed to find out by myself where the village hides the Eye of Thiassi. Is that so?
- I have the wings. I think I read somewhere it's how you're supposed to dispell the flames around the walkyrie, but to be honest I can't remember. I've tried anyway and it doesn't work. I don't know how to free the walkyrie.
- what am I supposed to do in the swamp? There could be the good ol' trck of force-feeding the plant, but I can't imagine anything that it would like.
- I challenged Skyrmir and lost (the bastard took my amulet). I don't know with what object I could challenge him again in the future -- or even how to win any of the challenges. Maybe the wings could help me win the speed challenge, no idea. And maybe making sure I'm very hungry could help me win the eating contest.
- I "cleaned" the workshop with the wind spell, but the craftsman got angry, turned into a fish, and disappeared forever. Was it because my wind spell's level was too low?
- I still have no idea how to unfreeze the frost flowers.
- I haven't found out how to sail the Jarl's drakkar. I would think mastering the wind spell was enough, but apparently not.
- does the sliding puzzle only allow to access Loki, or is there something else? (by the way: the Geneva convention should forbid slide-puzzles in point-n-clicks )
- what am I supposed to do with Loki?
- I'm not sure if at this stage there is a way for me to enter the Aegir's fortress, or if I'll have to wait later.
- I haven't found what human trinket I should trade with the collectioner in Svartalheim.
- I suspected I should give the crystal from the crystal cave to the glitter-lover elf, but it got "burnt" by mistake when I went walking in Midgard's daylight. Is it definitely too late?

[close]

[To get the fish:]

The fact that you can't enter the guild now is a bug and will be fixed in v1.1. This is caused due to advancing the game too far without entering the guild first. Reload a saved game before Svartalheim.

Ouch :'( Svartalheim is way too far back. I guess I'll give up on the game. Unless, as you say, it's not required to wake up the Jarl to finish the game.


To get the fish:

Spoiler

The fish can be caught at the lake with a net.

Not only. If the thief got your net and you're stuck by the guild-bug, you can get a fish from the barrel in the watchtower. If you're a sorceress you'll need the teleportation spell to access it (I can't remember how I got it but I think it was in Svartalfheim).

[close]

non-blocking glitch report
If you use the shadow spell in the magician's lab, the shadow exits the lab through the door...And walks way beyond the expected AGS walkbehind: you can see it walk on top of the room after it goes past the door.

[accused of being thieves at night in the castle]

A little tip for the sorcerers (and warriors?) who get accused of being thieves at night in the castle, when they were actually there "by mistake":

Spoiler

Here is how to reproduce this semi-bug:
- be in the magician's lab during the day
- wait for him to tell you to get out of his lab (because he needs to go into town)
- a script automatically makes you walk back to the castle's hall
- immediately go back to the magician's lab. you can't get in because there is the magic barrier
- wait in this spot until the magician comes back
[if you're unlucky , at this stage the night has fallen]
- wait a little longer. The magician might want to leave again (in the middle of the night) and expells you from his lab.
- the script automatically makes you walk to the hall
- you're screwed: a guard immediately calls you thief. you get arrested and lose the game.

The way to work around that semi-bug:
- try to use the telescope. If you're lucky enough (I'm not sure if it depends on you trying several times, or on your speech skills), the magician will let you do it.
- while you're looking through the telescope and click on "WAIT", the magician cannot ask you to leave his lab (or if he does, it has no effect)
- therefore you're safe from being expelled to the castle's hall, and arrested.

[close]

Is there any place at all where you can sleep in Svartalfheim ?

[The weirdest thing just happened]

About the hidden book - The weirdest thing just happened : i solved the puzzle without even knowing how.

Spoiler

Spoiler

If you don't understand the poem, maybe you can find some help interpreting it?

[close]

I had guessed (even before reading your clue) that maybe some other book in the library could help me interpretate the poem better. So, I had been clicking on (I believe) all sections of the library, with the poem. None of them responded, except one, that said something apparently irrelevent (I can't remember what, though, I must confess). I remained stuck.

After reading your clue I thought "Oh, I should ask someone if they understand the poem" so I went to show the poem to every single character in the game (except the orphan girl, I couldn't find her), including the capital. Nobody seemed to be interested.
So I went back to the library and thought "maybe I forgot to click on one of the bookshelves", so I took the note in the inventory, clicked randomly on the first bookshelf under my cursor, and BOOM "this is the book you're looking for!"
Duh?

I don't know if that's supposed to happen when you click on the entire bookshelf after you got the relevant clue (and that would mean I got the clue without knowing it), or if I got incredibly lucky and randomly clicked on the one pixel where the book was.

[close]

About the thief:

Spoiler

I got to enter regin's house after using Sixth Sense.
Was it possible to enter his house before? Because the scenery depicted in the house looks so "normal" that it makes me suspect I could enter that house any time (provided Regin was in), but I just got incredibly unlucky and always tried when he was out. And you have no idea how hard I tried (I stayed awake 24 hours, taking one-hour rests, to try at every hour of the day!)

[close]

[Since then I'm hoping the thief will come back]

About the librarian's hidden book :

Spoiler

(as a sorceress)
- I have decrypted the poem
- I have translated the poem
- I don't understand who is this "unarmed opponent" I'm supposed to run from.
I've considered it might be a pun (an armchair is "armed"), or maybe it just tells you to run in the opposite direction from something/someone harmless (the ghost?). But I can't figure it out.

Knowing if that must be done inside or outside the library would narrow my quest.

[close]

About the thief:

Spoiler

(as a sorceress)
I probably didn't pick the right dialog choice when waking up (I chose: "stop, thief!") and the heroin didn't get fight and didn't get the piece of cloth. OK.

Since then I'm hoping the thief will come back but he/she never does. I leave the window open and I'm loaded with money, to no avail.

[close]

[- The pick that can't be used for climbing up ice:]

Small things that feel weird in this game with otherwise great immersion. They break the suspension of disbelief, and are utterly easy to fix:

- The pick that can't be used for climbing up ice: you have a pick. There are at least 3 places where you'd like to climb up a frozen surface: Below the ice flowers, below the tower on the shore, and (possibly, but less likely) up the boulders where you were left for dead. In one of the cases, the character even says "the places where you could put your hands are made too slippery by the ice". So you use your pick. And you have this utterly annoying message saying "you like to make little holes everywhere?".

- The flame spell that sometimes melts stuff, sometimes doesn't: The same message causes the same confusion: "the places where you could put your hands are made too slippery by the ice". In several other places, the flames spell is used precisely to melt the ice. Here, it isn't. But with no explanation. Just the generic spell animation, but no effect. A clearer message would be cool.

- The starving character who cannot eat meat: When you're a sorcerer, you kill piles of wolves. Yet you can't get any meat. I understand you need a special skill for that. But the message "there's nothing of interest on this dead wolf" is very frustrating. There should be a short explanation, especially when you're about to starve to death. By the way, same thing for the prisoners' food in the keep: "yuck, I don't like that food, so instead I'll just die". Wut?

- The magician who has no interest whatsoever in the progress of the quest he gave you: No matter how close you are to killing the haugbui (and as you know, there are many steps to achieving that), the wizard has no new dialog about that topic, until you actually deal with the "final" object. Even when you give it to him. As you've seen in the hints and tips thread, it confused other people. He doesn't need to give you clues. But as it is now, it's very puzzling.

- The character who isn't able to make a report with words, but only by showing the contents of her pockets: There are several quests that cannot move on until you give the relevant object to the relevant person, even when that object is merely a clue, and you could instead talk about it in the dialog: "Hey, I found this, let's talk about it". Sometimes you even forget that you have the object, and are just eager to report that you found something. But the dialog option just isn't there. But I understand that this could just be a peculiar puzzle design choice, and it requires some work to fix, so it's up to you.

- The confusing prupose of the eitur: There I was, in front of someone who looks like he's almost dead but not completely, incapacitated by a magical spell (the walkyrie lying in the circle of fire). I look at the eitur, and it says exactly: "it's meant for reviving someone who is incapacitated by magical effects, provided they're not dead yet". But not that someone. It's for another someone, who doesn't look like a someone.


All those remarks are to make the game closer to perfection. I could write entire paragraphs about how good the experience is, how much I got immersed into the game's universe, and how at some points I shared the actual feelings of the character (like it should be in every good RPG). Great game.

the original Nikee found out today's she's a video game character. Probably should have told her ten years ago...

I suspected it was a rela-life person, and possibly a person from the past, but I didn't think they wouldn't know they're in the game

Thanks for the suggestion, people! At the moment I made the huge mistake of trying out Heroine's Quest (now I'm good for hours and hours of great gaming), but as soon as I have some free time again I'll try RoN again.

We're working on a v1.1, which (among other things) will allow you to redefine combat keys. Available soon!

Really cool. Beause even the Windows Language Bar is not really a solution: the combat keys work, but then the keys are messed up the other way around in the game's notepad.

[non-English keyboard]

Let's be honest: this an amazing game, with a very high level of finish, and very well debugged.

Having said that, I get very frustrated over my non-English keyboard.

Here is my experience (playing on 1.0)
- I don't like playing windowed, so I run the shortcut "run in fullscreen". It fails on my tiny notebook, because for some reason the game requests a 960x600 resolution. Dang.
- I go to the game's folder. No standard setup.exe file. Dang dang.
- I put one here myself. Here I notice that some fancy "nearest neighbour" filter is used. I run the game in regular 320x200 fullscreen, no filter. Crossing fingers and hoping it won't cause a bug later on.
- Combat training : I need a non-English keyboard mapping for my non-English keyboard (A<-->Z, Q<-->W)
- I go to the settings of the game : it's not possible to change the keys. Dang dang dang.
- I decide to use Monkey's trick: just use Windows' language button in the task bar. PROBLEM: the game is full screen. And that button applies to the window that has the focus. When you minimize a fullscreen app, it loses the focus. So I can't play with a non-English keyboard if the game plays fullscreen. I eventually had to look up the Windows' shortcut online: I press Left-shift+Left-Alt in-game, and it works. But not everybody knows that this solution exists.

=============

A tiny unrelated complaint : Everything in the game has a cooltip (when you hover over any button, it tells you what it's for) EXCEPT all the buttons in the main toolbar, at the top of the screen: rest, spell selection, options, etc. And their function is not obvious from the icon (I didn't dare clicking for 10 seconds, thinking: "what if this one is for casting a useless spell that will drain all my mana in the first minute of the game? I'd need to save the game just to test them".

You get the idea. Cooltips would be cool for those. They're not absolutely necessary, but consistency is always appreciated.

Alright, that was it. There was one too many DisableInterface(); somewhere.

Now that's quite mysterious. I've used that set of custom scripts for months without touching it, it was quite rock-solid. And suddenly there's an issue only in this room. I'll have to dig deep to find the original cause! But that's my business

Thanks Iceboty and Khris! Problem solved!

EDIT : post below referring to things that got fixed in version 2.x

Spoiler

move the cursor out of the inventory dialog in order to close it.

+1.
Also In the inventory, right-clicking to deselect the item (go back to normal arrow pointer) would be cool.

[close]

Did you use DisableInterface()?
Try displaying IsInterfaceEnabled().

There are indeed functions doing DisableInterface() in my code, but normally I do EnableInterface() just a few instructions before the issue occurs. But you're right, I'll test just in case.

[So the game is definitely not in a cutscene.]

The symptoms seem to point at the game being in a cutscene (as I said the game is not blocked: in repeatedly_execute_always I can test mouse.IsButtonDown(eMouseLeft) and it works -- but the game loop never enters on_mouse_click).

However in repeatedly_execute_always I test the value of Game.InSkippableCutscene (I display its value in the status bar using Status.Text=String.Format("incutscne=%d", Game.InSkippableCutscene);) ... And it says it's worth 0. So the game is definitely not in a cutscene.

Any idea on what other situation could give similar symptoms?

During a cutscene, the engine is blocked and on_mouse_click() will not be executed. Are you sure the cutscene has ended? Instead, you need to check IsButtonDown() on whether a button is clicked, like in repeatedly_execute_always().

Thanks for the tip, I'll keep searching.

[ISSUE:]

I have that game with a lot of custom scripts.
So far it worked like a charm.

I've toyed around with some cutscene that was already there and worked well. I've mainly changed the sequence of rooms the main character goes through during the cutscene; during the cutscene the main character changes several times (I use "setAsPlayer" back and forth) and he goes through 3 rooms.

ISSUE: At the end of the cutscene, the last room fades-in correctly, BUT then it's like the mouse clicks are not caught. I added Display("click"); in the global script's on_mouse_click, and it's never called when I click in-game.

Note that:
-  I didn't use ClaimEvent anywhere.
- The game is not hanging (the cursor is animated and the label showing what hotspot is under the mouse gets properly updated when I move the mouse around. That calculation is done in repeatedly_execute_always).
- The game works OK in any other room.
- It's not a missing "EndCutscene": I've tried to add one, and the game crashes with "there is no cutcene going on so don't call EndCutscene, you jackass" (more or less). 
- The player character is on a walkarea (I even added a player.placeOnWalkarea(); to be sure).

What on earth could block a "Display" comment on the first line of on_mouse_click???

I used the keyboard for the arcade (unlike some, I didn't notice I could use the mouse). It's made difficult by the fact that the collision boxes are awful, so you end up hitting randomly the sides of the "road" -- which makes the character stop unexpectedly, and before you realize, he dies under a bomb. That's extremely frustrating.

I think that could be very easily solved by enlarging the walking areas a bit.

call character2.setAsPlayer(); and the game will switch to the room character2 is in.

I didn't think of that. Will try asap.