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arvisrend
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Post by arvisrend »

Oh, hi BC. I know about that quest, and I wanted to add that I don't consider it enough... don't know why I forgot it.

It's the fact that it is the second quest given by that Ashamul smuggler. While it is not directly trivial to get the first quest, but most players will get it sooner or later (with Mithras' questline), getting the second without a walkthrough is yet harder, because there is no hint at its existence. You have to leave dialogue and talk to the smuggler again after finishing the first one.
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Post by Why »

If any other ruin is used it should be Amthuandz. Archtumz probably needs a bit of fixing, but definitely not expanding.
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Sload
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Post by Sload »

Bloodthirsty Crustacean wrote:I've forgotten what's in Hemi's file and which of these puzzles already exist. Does this plan need any new ints/elements to be created, or are all these things in existence already? If not, we'll need someone to get on that.

Once all the ints are finally in place and ready, we can get a final plan sorted out and this would basically be ready for claiming. This outline is great, thankyou Sload; in the meanwhile we'll also need some things to fill in the generic quest slots, but not too generic, keep them relevant and interesting.

I think if the ints could be produced in a reasonable time, then this should aim to be part of the forthcoming M2 release, as it's kinda the point of the entire map.
The only quests I actually designed were not imagined with any particular ints in mind, and will probably require entire new ints with considerable scripting. To be honest, that's really the rub: to make a good "dungeon diving" quest, the interior needs to be designed with the quest in mind, not the other way around.

There's still a lot of fleshing out to be done obviously, but I think what I made was a pretty good backbone for a questline. All the pieces just sort of flowed from and into one another in a satisfying way. I also think this would be a good quest to try to create sooner, rather than later, because it is both a big deal and extremely localized, meaning it doesn't need to worry about the larger picture.
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Post by Theo »

Amhtuandz ont only is the other site excavated by IAS, it is also unused in other quests so far as I remember and it is also perhaps the nearest Dwemer ruin to Kemel-Ze.

May I also suggest something for Q1:

There could be randomly spawning hostile looters in certain parts of Kemel-Ze, wearing scavenged armors and weapons. There are some empty levels in the middle parts, where tourists do not have access already, but centurions do not appear yet).
Renie beleives these looters are organized and that they had set up some sort of a base in some hidden chamber. Also she fears that they have looted some devices she needs for making the elevator work. She gives you a list of items she needs you to retrieve.

There would be several alternative ways to solving the quest:

1) Based on the density of such encounters and hints from guards an other NPCs wandering in the ruin (is not an idea of some homeless guys illegely inhabiting some part of the ruin too far-fetched?) you would manage to figure out the location of this hidden outpost yourself, open it (finding a secret crank, or blast it with explosives), clean it out and retrieve the stolen loot. Among it you can also find books providing some insights into some future puzzles and/or specifying the location of the item needed for Q6 (You would only get some very generic description of the ruin where they should be from your questgiver, which would fit to 1-2 other ruins in the area as well and player would have to check for all of them or seek additional information in books). There can be some enchanted goodies too. After killing the leader of scavengers the annoying random encounters with them would cease.
2) Or alternatively player could go, inspect few merchants in Helnim suspected from secretely buying the goods (he gets some tips from Renie), fidning the right one (should be relatively easy) and muscle him to tell him where and when he meets with his providers. Player would set up a meeting with them, kill them and retrieve the items needed. The looters would still appear in the ruin, being even more hostile and the merchant would disappear from the town.
3) Or another option would be, that player would just could go to the merchant and give him Renies list. The merchant would ask some horrendous sum of money and after some days he would have the goods ready for you. You would not get the reward items though, Renie would be somehow bitter that you took such soft approach and the raids would continue.
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Sload
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Post by Sload »

So glad to see so much progress on this during the last 2 years.

How, in the context of a Dwemer ruin, can TR incorporate good puzzles?

Things you have to look up in a book are not good puzzles. A good puzzle will engage with the player's deductive reasoning using the information provided directly in the cell being played. Action-adventure games should serve as inspiration. Basically, Kemelze is a Legend of Zelda Temple inside Morrowind.
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Post by rot »

[url=http://tamriel-rebuilt.org/old_forum/viewtopic.php?t=23825]Here's a crude walkthrough of a large portion of current Kemel-Ze.[/url] Awkward map only covers things down the archaeologist base, and missing the Starborne/Lzigat cells, should probably finish it. [url=http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Tes3Mod:Tamriel_Rebuilt/Kemel-Ze]UESP[/url] also has a map of the cell structure, though with a mistake here or there iirc.

As you can see it's almost exclusively leverplay, apparent interaction between the unlocking of different cells, and keys (basically collect 2 Lzigat keys from the area depicted on the paintmap; with those get a 3d from Tower of Requiem? and I assume then get access to Starborne/Lzigat?) The only ints that were designed with some kind of puzzle in mind are for the waterlevel thing in Chefidz/Basin.




Some old ideas for puzzles:

- major oilspill area. The "underwater" area is spoiled thick oil, which obviously you can't breathe with waterbreathing spells and slows you down. What I like about this: it'd be an organic obstacle, meaning whichever puzzle you give to solve/bypass it can be extremely hard while still allowing someone who doesn't get it to bruteforce through (also, hidden option to develop custom oilbreathing potions/spells from special spellmakers and alchemists) - AND, it could be applied to any previously visited cells which otherwise had nothing to do with that puzzle. Immersion, literally.

- no gold allowed: PC is magically analysed before a door, and denied the access to a quarantine area if there's any gold (or known gold items) in inventory. For the fluff, it's... a special experimental processing part where the dwemer metal gets even more refined than normal and so shouldn't have any gold traces in it? Hint is some gold ore aggregating around a filtering area where the metal processing gets done at another interface with that cell you're trying to access. If the PC stays near there too long, messagebox describing that "The gold in your pockets becomes sizzling hot" due to the magical resonant separation method or whatever. Bit of fire damage.

- levitation-disabling / jump-dampening magical walls. When passing through them any levitation effects get dispelled and if the PC were jumping fast and high enough to reach whatever we don't want them to, they progressively get slowed right before it. Example puzzle: you enter at the bottom of a cylindrical area, the exit is at the top and has a levitation disable right before it. You have to flood the area (re-flooding Chefidz?!) to access it.

- sadistic follow-up: you enter at the bottom of a similar area which has an unopenable door at the top. You can get water flowing in there, which locks the door you came in from. When it reaches the top... nope, that door still doesn't open. Another door silently opens at the bottom instead.
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Post by rot »

UESP map with a couple fixes, clarifications and annotations.

Proposition:
- the whole thing with the 3 Lzigat keys and huge area to explore stay freeform and become a side-quest as far as the IAS is concerned
- disconnect Bznch from Aster, the entrance.
- use the newly separated area (Bznch/Shorebreak Well/... 5 cells) for the main IAS quest.
- repurpose Hemitheon's awesome interiors as the area you're teleported to for the rest of the main IAS quest

- optional: replace Vels' link to Chungkefpz by a trapdoor going up to north of Aster, the entrance
- optional: use the lava cauldron and percolator mechanism in Karkanch to unfreeze Hemitheon's ice?
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Yeti
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Post by Yeti »

The gold scanning idea sounds a little too sci-fi.

I remember checking out Hemi's additional Kemel-ze. I can't really recall whether they were good or not.
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Post by rot »

coc "TurnMeOn"
Does this puzzle make sense? Is it too easy? How'd you improve it? (its principle, not the interior design itself)

[url=http://tamriel-rebuilt.org/old_forum/viewtopic.php?p=315618#315618]Fixed and moved the above to a thread where I can edit posts...[/url]

Also any other ideas for 'self-explanatory' puzzles? that you can make sense of by observation and deduction, in the vein of Mainland's "Ardkoz, Test of Disorder".
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Post by Theo »

- Use a lift than find another way to your original location, open the door to the shaft and find out there is a hidden passage (you may need to get over the roof of the lift cabin).

- A bridge that can be rotated using a control and switches between connecting N-S and E-W.

- A floor raises to bridge the gap between two exists, but at the same time (because below the floor is one solid block) it blocks right-angle corridor on the lower level in the gap.
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Post by rot »

_ The dwarves being heavy on tonality and such, one very fitting puzzle would be to have at one point a deceptively trivial path puzzle that is associated with a pattern of sounds, which would be the key to a more complicated combinatorial puzzle much later on.


So I suck at designing environmental puzzles, but 'mini-game' puzzles à la Ardkoz, possibly for other dwemer ruins - easy. Couple ideas:

_ a packing puzzle, with pre-rotated pieces you insert (in automatic order, from left/right bottom/top or reverse...) of a square 'box' by pushing associated levers. That's fairly simple to solve while still making you want to pull some paper

_ multi-dimentional maze. You have to navigate (PC or an object...) inside a puzzle you can see the entirety of, the catch being you have to do that for two or three mazes (with different obstacles) in parallel.
eg. a puzzle with 2 (very easy) or 3 (easy) perpendicular maze faces, with an pronged object that pokes out of every face.
or, the PC navigates in a corridor with objects "magnetically" following them below and above (except both face obstacles so you have to clear a path that's safe for both)
or, you literally switch between dimensions (lighting colour cues?)
...

_ this needs custom pieces but I'd still love to see a gratuitously gigantic lockpicking puzzle
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Post by Rats »

Concerning the IAS: I'm under the impression that Kemel-Ze plays an important role in whatever overarching plotline we have planned / are going to plan for them. Does anybody know what is the point of Kemel-Ze? It's an overwhelmingly huge-ass ruin, but what is the reason it exists for? Does it hold some brilliant treasure, a revelation, or some slumbering force waiting to be unearthed? What new and exciting does it add to the Dwemer lore?

I'm not asking because I want to question Kemel-Ze's existence. I'm asking because I don't know.
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Post by rot »

(thankyouthankyouthankyou for caring about kmlz)

Yeah I keep meaning to post somewhere to ask for dwemer secrets, because you can give some gameplay loot for sure but a big archeology-oriented questline can only culminate with some 'discovery' of sorts (or at least something suggestive of ~ ). The fluff/roleplay reward can't really be climbing ranks in itself like for the FG/MG/TG.

(needless to say, the gameplay point is for it to be fun)
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Post by Yeti »

Perhaps we could integrate the Kemel-ze questline with the [url=http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Mystery_of_the_Dwarves]Mystery of the Dwarves[/url] quest from vanilla. I always felt that it was kind of underwhelming and anticlimactic given the immensity of the secret it is trying to uncover.

I mean, you discover the solution to one of Tamriel's greatest unsolved mysteries, and Trebonius Artorius sort of just shrugs and says: "Oh, that's cool. Whatevs."

But first, before we can really work of this quest line, I think we need a Faction-style document for the Dwemer, similar to the Great House ones we have going so far.
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Rats
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Post by Rats »

Ugh, didn't even remember that Trebonius was that one-dimensional.

I read the old posts through in this thread and there was some concern that coming up with new lore for the Dwemer would cause a conflict with the Mystery of the Dwarves. But honestly, I wouldn't worry about it since the quest is pretty uninspired:
Trebonius on 'disappearance of the Dwarves' wrote:It's a simple task, surely. Just go to some ruins and... erm... and find out what happened to them. Maybe some people here in the Mages Guild can give you some clues.

Oh? Let me see these books, %PCRank. Oh, yes, of course. This "Egg of Time" is quite obvious... in its... um... descriptions... of the things... that happened. Yes, of course. It is all quite clear to me. I would prefer that you wrote a report that... um... simplified your findings, but I trust that you have indeed solved the mystery.
(not to mention that afterwards Trebonius wants to kill all the Telvanni councilors because we 'simply don't get along well')

But really, could we just ignore this quest (and Yagrum too while were at it, since writing new dialogue for the last _living_ dwarf is something that's imo too daunting), and instead focus on Kemel-Ze and whatever Dwemer secret it holds. Maybe a few wild-goose chases as to where the Dwemer went (unearthing and stepping through some weird dimensional gate; conjuring old spectres who don't know anything; finding an automaton-bonewalker revenant of Bthuand Mzahnch or Dumac)?
Yeti wrote:But first, before we can really work of this quest line, I think we need a Faction-style document for the Dwemer, similar to the Great House ones we have going so far.
Agreed 100%.
Last edited by Rats on Mon Feb 24, 2014 12:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by rot »

Trebonius: "that's the joke", even if not much of one. Not to say the MG can't get interested in the dwemer in a more serious way, but
Rats wrote: could we just ignore this quest and instead focus on Kemel-Ze and whatever Dwemer secret it holds.
sounds more promising.

Either way 'the disappearance of the Dwarves' can't be addressed directly/explicitly without sounding like fanfic theory #9001 (even if that's what anything really is),
trying to involve what the dwarves became would be in poor taste too. Could still have suggestive elements though (lorepoops can't get off if they don't have room to speculate), maybe of reasons why the Dwarves would want to bail out.

Or what are the animunculi.

Or why there are/what are Dwemer ghosts (simulacra? living information?)

Things that took place in the dwarves' history, way before &/or unrelated to the later disappearance.

...

[url=http://tamriel-rebuilt.org/old_forum/viewtopic.php?t=24292]may intersect with this thread[/url]
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Post by Yeti »

rot wrote: Or why there are/what are Dwemer ghosts (simulacra? living information?)
I always hated the presence of Dwemer ghosts in the game. They utterly broke the mystique surrounding the Dwemers' disappearance for me. How can anyone claim that the Dwemer all dissapeared when there are so many still haunting their ruins? It was an blatant discrepancy, one that constantly thrust in my face every time I encountered a bearded specter when spelunking in a Dwemer ruin.

The idea that they're not actually the spirits of dead Dwemer, but artificial depositories of information, however, would automatically makes them 10,000 percent more interesting. It would really allow us to show just how good the Dwemer were at warping the limits of reality with their technology.

Maybe the player could even come across a "malfunctioning" Dwemer spirit in Kemel-ze, who can only provides them with portions of information needed to solve a puzzle. Just an idea.
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Terrifying Daedric Foe
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Post by Terrifying Daedric Foe »

Sort of like the VIs in Mass Effect? That would be pretty cool.
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Post by gro-Dhal »

Yeah they're definitely artificial Star Wars hologram things. They're also still ghosts because they drop ectoplasm, but the two things aren't mutually exclusive.

[quote=Yeti]
But first, before we can really work of this quest line, I think we need a Faction-style document for the Dwemer, similar to the Great House ones we have going so far. [/quote]

The problem with that is that the Dwemer are mysterious and enigmatic by design. They have a thoroughly alien psychology and motivations, so pinning them down as a faction will be difficult and maybe not worth it.

Any interaction with Dwemer technology or culture should involve it being misunderstood and mishandled by 'modern' characters. The holograms being seen as ghosts of the dead is a fine example of this. The weather machine in Mournhold is another one- why would they build a device that could make it rain ash on themselves? The answer is that they didn't, the weather machine was built for another purpose altogether and its effects on the local climate are a coincidental byproduct. That's the sort of unknowableness I mean.
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Post by rot »

Dwemer ghosts could also be the animunculi's attempt at recreating their masters.

If it can be done without being ham-fisted, there could be a quest where you're asked to trap a dwemer ghost 'soul' and "get it looked at".
With any necromancer NPC telling you enough vague info to the effect that it's artificial (w/ more info from the balmora MG orc, or other friendly necromancers), enchanters adding that it's still exploitable energy...
Yeah I also imagine that's the sort of stuff that might already be known, so could be introduced by some new discovery calling into question some basic works on the subject. Or just a fairly obscure quest from a foreign necromancer
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Post by gro-Dhal »

rot wrote:Dwemer ghosts could also be the animunculi's attempt at recreating their masters.
lol reality is shaped by belief. The animunculi don't realise their masters are dead/vanished, and their teeny tiny souls have inadvertently conjured some wispy shades into existence. To a steam centurion all mortals look like ephemeral ghosts anyway.
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Post by rot »

gro-Dhal wrote:The animunculi don't realise their masters are dead/vanished, and their teeny tiny souls have inadvertently conjured some wispy shades into existence.
That is just perfectly sad.
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